Marcia McNutt

Welcome & Opening Plenary

Tuesday Plenary, 11:00am

Marcia McNutt (B.A. in physics, Colorado College; Ph.D. in Earth sciences, Scripps Institution of Oceanography) is a geophysicist and the 22nd president of the National Academy of Sciences. From 2013 to 2016, she was editor-in-chief of Science journals. McNutt was director of the U.S. Geological Survey from 2009 to 2013, during which time USGS responded to a number of major disasters, including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. For her work to help contain that spill, McNutt was awarded the U.S. Coast Guard’s Meritorious Service Medal. She is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the International Association of Geodesy. McNutt is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society, UK, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy. In 1998, McNutt was awarded the AGU’s Macelwane Medal for research accomplishments by a young scientist, and she received the Maurice Ewing Medal in 2007 for her contributions to deep-sea exploration.

Underwater Applications of Autonomous Vehicles and AI:
Case Study for Robots in Extreme Environments

Marcia McNutt, Robin Murphy, Neil Jacobstein, and James Billingham

Exploration of the deep sea and successful marine interventions have expanded remarkably over the past few decades through the introduction of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) equipped with capable physical, chemical, and biological sensors, more dexterous manipulators, and integrating artificial intelligence (AI) for control and detection. The new capabilities have benefitted from the acceleration of competition in industrial AI and robotics development. These breakthroughs have increased the scope and decreased the cost of large-scale and high-resolution data collection in the marine environment. While adding immense value to our understanding of ocean mysteries, these tools also have broader relevance to our ability to access other extreme and inhospitable environments, such as distant planets, disaster zones, sewages systems, and other settings that either preclude or challenge human presence. The longer-term societal applications and benefits of investment in deep-sea technologies will more than justify the investment in these systems.