 So we start let's go ahead. Okay, welcome everybody. My name is Jen mixes old I'm from the University of New Hampshire where I serve as the director of the Center for acoustics research and education. And I am the chair of the committee on ocean acoustics education and expertise. There's a whole committee panel that we will introduce in just a second. And this today is the early career information gathering panel. So as part of this committee and our activities, we are hosting three or four different information gathering panels that will help inform the committee members and writing the report at the final at the end of this committee on ocean ocean acoustics education expertise. This is the second panel that we have engaged in. And the goals for today is to collect information and perspectives from early career individuals to inform the committee's report. We are going to talk about two different aspects. We're going to talk about what you thought about and how your experience was with ocean acoustics and acoustics as you move from your academic program into the workforce and insights on entering the workforce and what the job market was as you took that step. So as I said, we are we are committee joined online today, we've got Andrea and Wales from Penn State. Art bagger from MIT. We are modeling from idos education. Jean Lee from the University of Washington. Carolyn RuPaul from the US Geological Survey. Dale scope prof from the University of Rhode Island and Preston Wilson from the University of Austin, Texas. One thing that I definitely would like to encourage panelists and anyone from the public. After this panel if you have lingering thoughts that you wanted to make sure get captured, you are more than welcome to email me, Carolyn bell who it works with us from the National Academy side, or any of the committee members. From the next slide. So here is the statement of tasks for this National Academies Committee. I'm not going to read the whole thing hopefully you have seen this already so this is not new, but I do want to highlight the four different aspects that we are going to talk about today. It's really nice this panel covers all four of them. We'll be looking at the state of education for ocean acoustics in the United States right now. An examination of the workforce demand that you experienced during your career, the skill sets or competencies needed to meet the workforce demand. And then we'll take a look at how the needs are not being met and strategies for elevating not only ocean acoustics education, but careers in ocean acoustics. The next slide. So this report really going to cover quite a few items, things that question that we have for you will cover today. The academic institutions you came from in the offered courses or didn't offer courses in ocean acoustics or other acoustics related sub disciplines. What is the expertise that was required as you moved into your job after being in academia. What are the ocean acoustic workforce needs in your sector or region. What programs you may have engaged in during your education. So all of these things I hope that we'll touch on today and you can keep these sort of in the back of your mind, because these are the things we really hope to get at, as we sit down as a committee to prepare the support. Next. I will take it over. Thank you, Jen. My name is Caroline Bell. I'm the study director from the National Academy's Ocean Studies Board. So staff behind our committee working on this project on ocean acoustics education and expertise. Just a few logistical items please remain muted for our committee panelists and participants and public participants that are joining us. So unless you are speaking and we ask that you would raise your hand or use the chat feature and zoom for any questions. We will be giving priority to our committee members as this is an information gathering session for the committee to help inform their report. But as there's time at the end of the Q&A period. We will also take questions from the public audience. And as you are speaking, please turn your cameras on or keep your cams on to the extent possible to help have a sense of community, even though we are all in different locations on our zoom screens. And just a reminder again that this session is being recorded it will be put a posted on the project website and then we'll put the project website in the chat for anyone who would like to visit it. In my email address if there are any questions following this session, please feel free to read to reach out. And then just briefly, I'll run through the agenda before we kick off our panel. So here shortly we're going to hear from our panelists and you can see all different stages of early career personnel and ocean acoustics and acoustics. And then we'll have about an hour for Q&A. We'll be starting at 2.30. So with that, I will turn it back over to Jim. Excellent. I, this is one of my favorite topics that we're doing the panels on because you guys have the insight at the transition you're early enough in your career that you're still have insight and feelings about what it was to transition from academia into your workforce. So I think that this is an excellent opportunity for us to understand where the field is meeting its objectives in ocean acoustics education, and where we can continue to improve. So with that, I'd like you to introduce yourself where you're from, and what sector that you are working in because I think we have a nice broad range of sectors here. And to really understand what sector you're from to make sure to introduce that part of you also. So we're going to go first. I guess we can go in alphabetical order. And let's see who we want to go for first, hold on just a second. You have to see who's first alphabetically. Yulek Chawarsky, please. Hi everybody, my name is Yulek Chawarsky. I am a PhD student at Memorial University, and I've been working in consulting over the last few years as I finished my PhD and now I'm working full time at ASL Environmental Sciences, and I primarily use hydro acoustics or some call it bio acoustics, but it's the use of active sonar echo sounders to measure the distribution of biological backscatter in the water column. And I use that as a tool to support studies in marine ecology and spatial ecology. Thanks. I'm just your sector, you are a for profit private industry company, correct. ASL Environmental Sciences. Yeah, I contract in academic institutions, but currently I also work. Let's say three quarter time in private for profit industry. Thank you very much. Thank you. I made one slide that would be helpful to share that I can give a background or come up please. Excellent. Thank you. So my name is Ishaan. I'm currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. But I guess in my do two minutes maybe I wanted to impress upon the audience here and my path into ocean acoustics is primarily driven by chance. It started off at Duke University. I was pursuing a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. I knew I was interested in something environmental. I wasn't sure what that was. And again, very randomly ended up at a summer session at the Duke Marine Lab. And then after that started and sort of TA to class in ocean engineering at the undergraduate level around 10 students. I built some low cost sensors for the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health X Prize, which we did not win. But that that's what got me interested in ocean sciences and ocean technology. And I went to the joint program at MIT in Woods Hole. I'm working under the direction of Professor Henry Schmidt, mostly in marine autonomy and how acoustics embedded acoustics plays a role in that. So my education here was some coursework largely not necessarily pure acoustics or physics, but engineering acoustics and applied acoustics. And currently in my in my research at Woods Hole, it's a lot more acoustical oceanography doing things I didn't get to do in graduate school, a lot more modeling historical data analysis. The throughput through all of this is that a lot of this was by chance. And that I'm going from here into a nonprofit, or sorry, a for profit startup role after my post. Thank you. Congratulations on the new job. Thank you. Shannon steel. Hi everyone I'm Shannon steel. I'm a research scientist at cracking robotics, which is a publicly traded for profit company. And so I work mostly in research and development in a couple different areas such as in general as in we specialize in synthetic aperture sonar and so I work in synthetic aperture sonar and design processing artificial intelligence for object detection and things like that. In terms of I guess how I got here. I'm from Canada so I did my undergraduate degree at Dalhousie University with I did earth sciences and oceanography. And what got me into sonar was actually when I was taking a remote sensing class and I did kind of my final report on radar sensing for ocean bathymetry where I found that that kind of like say this Jebco image that I'm showing is most of our knowledge or kind of mapping of the seabed bathymetry is actually really low resolution and kind of just estimates based on radar data so not really direct estimates of the seabed bathymetry and to get, you know, more direct estimates of seabed bathymetry we need to use sonar. And so that's what got me interested in sonar. Particularly I got really fascinated with the idea of kind of seeing with sound. And so for do it for my kind of thesis project at the end of my bachelor's degree I really wanted to do something in sonar. And I was lucky enough to get and put in contact with the Defense Research Development Canada. So they do a lot of the naval research here in Canada and so I was able to do kind of my end project on modeling mid frequency for scattering. And then from there I went to the University of New Hampshire's to do my master's degree in oceanography. And so I did that with the Center for Coastal and ocean mapping. And there I was looking at kind of this wacky and fire synthetic after sonar, where basically we took this sonar and went on to this ice surface and moved the sonar up and down to collect this wacky data looking data here to form a synthetic aperture sonar time series. And that kind of gave me experience and synthetic aperture sonar, even though it's not the same type of synthetic aperture sonar I work on now. It was certainly a good background to set me up for my job that I have now. Yeah. Thank you very much. And just right now you are at a for profit private industry. Yeah. Thank you. Hillary Kate's for ease. Hi everyone. Well, I will say that I prepared something a little maybe more in depth than you're looking for so I'll try to breeze through it but I work for the federal government now I work for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. As a technically a marine biologist but I call myself a marine bio acquisition on my business card. So, yes, try not to get into the weeds here but I started my acoustics journey in my undergrad degree. I went to Cornell University and joined a club called the wildlife society and we took a tour of Chris Clark's lab of ornithology and he talked about Wales calling in New York City Harbor and ever since then I was hooked on to this topic. And I didn't have the privilege to explore that there. And so I kind of became went down the path of trying to get into a PhD to study marine bio acoustics. I worked for a biofuel company before applying for PhD programs and I thought it was worth noting that the first time I applied to PhD programs I did not get in. I also applied to three different fellowships, the National Science Foundation GRFP the National Defense Foundation, the NDSEG, I can't remember the full acronym there, and the Hertz Foundation so happy to dig into into what that was like. But the big takeaway was that I didn't have a enough quantitative skills to get into a PhD program in marine mammal bio acoustics at that time. So I went to the local university near where I was working and pursued a applied mathematics degree. Unfortunately, this program fortunate for them unfortunate for me this was a program geared towards math features. So it's really hard to find acoustics in this but I did take several courses that that helped me later in life including differential and partial differential equations and I pursued a project a capstone project on sound propagation. I also included in this time in my time in my master's degree, I joined a lab group of biologists that were using acoustics to study wasps and bird behavior. I also worked on a citizen science project, since the same frogs and Southwestern Florida, based on their vocalizations. So at the end of my degree, I applied to gen mix this old CBAS program, which is a one week crash course on bio acoustics. And that's when I had the opportunity to meet her who and she became my later PhD advisor. And this is also when I first heard about all of all of the choices and careers outside of academia and the first time I met someone from the Bureau I now work for. The master's degree was really just a stepping stone to reapply to PhDs and so I did that. Eventually, landing at the University of New Hampshire, where I looked at the effect of ocean mapping sonar on marine mammals, my degree there was an oceanography. And as a PhD student in oceanography at the University of New Hampshire there's very few courses that you have to take other than the four core oceanography classes, but I also took courses in ocean mapping digital signal processing spatial statistics time time series analysis underwater acoustics and several marine policy classes that I was interested in. The most valuable piece of my PhD experience though with the fieldwork component and I got to go on four different research cruises and learn how to calibrate and deploy and and use both passive and active acoustic sensors. And then towards the end of my degree I took one of those marine policy classes and our professor was a previous NOAA employee and she brought in a lot of guest speakers including someone who works for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. And I connected with him afterwards and learned that they had a center for marine acoustics that was just forming. And so I stayed alert to to what was happening with that and finally a position opened and I applied and the stars line for me and now I'm a marine bioacquisition at boom. Thank you. I think our last panelist is Laura van Ulfelen. Hello, I did also have a slide which is mostly pictures. And I wanted to just so some pictures on the top really are from my journey and on the bottom are from some students that I have so I'm an assistant professor right now in ocean engineering at the University of Rhode Island. I also have a joint appointment in the Graduate School of Oceanography at URI and I did my PhD at Scripps in Oceanography. So my undergraduate degrees in engineering and I think ocean engineering was a good place for me to fall then although I always say my work lies somewhere between science and engineering. So in my in my role as an assistant professor I teach to teach undergraduate and graduate courses I actually just gave my last lecture on Thursday for an undergraduate course that I teach in underwater acoustics that's required of all our ocean engineering majors. I'm interested in long range acoustics, long range acoustic propagation, and also receiving on mobile platforms, and particularly in Arctic acoustics so that picture on the top right is me in the Beaufort Sea with the US Coast Guard cutter Healy in the background deploying sea gliders. My lab at URI is called the opera lab. We don't sing the stands for ocean platforms experiments and research in acoustics. And this really gives a hint at how I ended up in underwater acoustics which is through my interest in music so I was interested that each one brought this up to but the reason I'm in underwater acoustics is really, really due to chance. I was an engineering major and undergraduate and I had a, I was doing a minor in music, and I plan to do acoustic consulting, and I was working as a junior consultant in an architectural acoustics firm. And I was looking for, you know, things to do during the summer before my senior year, and I came across an advertisement from the marine physical laboratory at Scripps, you know, for underwater acoustics and I had never heard of it I didn't know it was a thing. But I wanted to go to California for the summer. I was living in Michigan. So I ended up there. And I had an amazing summer. I went on a couple short cruises. And like Hillary said I think the field work really, really hooked me. And I want to, I want to highlight in what I say today the importance of mentorship, because I think that really played a really big role for me. That summer I was an intern I met Catherine Kim. So she was at the time she was a senior graduate student working with Bill Hodgkis. But she was chief scientist of the cruise that I went on and I think it really inspired me to see a young woman in that, in that role in that leadership role because I could see myself doing it. So Catherine, you know, remains a friend and a mentor to me a friend or to me today she's now president of Green Ridge Sciences. But that summer, she and other researchers that I worked with a they sent me a poster of the Anzel Adams print of Scripps Pier and they all wrote notes on it and she said to me hook line and sinker baby, because she knew that I was hooked and I did I came back, and I did my graduate program there, even though before that summer I didn't even know, you know, that underwater acoustics was was a career path. On the left side, this is a picture from my PhD defense at Scripps so Peter Worcester on the right there was my graduate advisor. He's another reason I'm still an underwater acoustics today. He was an excellent advisor. He gave me solid advice taught me about integrity and research. He gave me credit for what I did when he presented my research. He introduced me to a lot of people and gave me responsibility when I was in the lab and at sea. So I think I was a pretty lucky graduate student I had a really great graduate experience. And that's Walter Monk also in the picture he was on my PhD committee and he was also a real source of inspiration for me. After I left Scripps, I was an assistant researcher for a few years at the University of Hawaii. I had a peer research position there, but I did have the opportunity to teach one course, it was a graduate course in observational methods. And so I took students to see on the key one and I really, I learned that I love teaching. And so that's how I, you know, I started looking for tenure track positions after that. And that's how I ended up at URI. So, I was recommended for tenure and promotion very recently so that'll be effective July one I think I just squeaked into this early career panel. But I really want to emphasize the importance of mentorship through that experience as well things don't, you know, come to a halt when you graduate from your PhD program. And Kathleen wage who's shown here in the center this is when I was a grad student she was on my PhD committee as well. She went to see with me and has, you know, been a mentor for me kind of through my PhD and also through the years that follow, particularly through the tenure track process. Kathleen is a full professor in electrical engineering at George Mason University. And, and she's also an exceptional teacher and so she's somebody I learned from when I was building, you know, my teaching program. I'm actually receiving the Rossing prize for acoustics education at giving a lecture at the ASA meeting next week. So, I try to pay it forward with mentoring my students the pictures on the bottom are of my students so on the, the upper right there as a former and current PhD student Luis Pamales and Chris grow pay. So, you know, have them do these outreach events. This one's called Science Saturday where they communicate about acoustics to the general public. I think it's important to get students to see so the bottom picture is the one of my former master students Wendy Snyder. She did a glider deployment in day Bob Bay, and then the picture on the bottom left is a group from a cruise that I took out to see just around the wind farm at URI these undergraduate students designed a passive acoustic system and deployed it out there. And so I think that was a really important experience for them as well. So, kind of to summarize, maybe that was a little long winded, but to summarize, I think there's, there's three really important components for attracting and retaining a workforce. And one is to, you know, make get the word out right. I ended up finding out about it by chance, but we, you know, finding a way to attract good students to provide hands on experience, you know, going to see, I think is a real hook for a lot of students, and then also to provide opportunities for mentorship throughout the journey, not just through graduate school. Thank you, Laura. And congratulations on your promotion. That's great. Great news. I think you look had two slides that he didn't get a chance to talk to so we can throw those up before we start going with questions. Yeah, thanks. I think I missed the memo on sharing slides there. I just got three short ones to introduce myself. Yeah, I'm actually a biologist in background. I got my bachelor's of biology at George Washington University and got interested in working with fisheries by studying some on its in the Patagonian step. I actually took a fairly long break between my bachelor's and my master's where I worked in different industries. And I got back working into fisheries science science by actually working as a ground fish observer in the Northeast fisheries observer program, which sent me out on over 100 different fishing vessels for different lengths of time. And it kind of put the issue of fisheries collapse front and center for me which inspired me to pursue an internship at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. And I joined that internship in the summer just for three months and was handed an echo view dongle and told to analyze a bunch of herring acoustic data which is really interesting because we were studying an inch or herring stock from an industry led survey. And that was kind of the entry point for me to start working in hydro acoustics. I continued to be a technician in analyzing acoustic data while I did my master's studying the age structure response of ground fish to marine protected areas in the Gulf of Maine. And right as I was finished my master's I kind of had this acoustic skill set that I built up and I was looking for a bunch of jobs around the New England area, and there wasn't really anything that suited the skill set at the time. And so I kind of opportunistically found an opportunity to go do my PhD in Canada so I moved from the US to Canada to Memorial University of Newfoundland, and was given tons of opportunities to go into the field to do to do research on on these two things. So Lantran fish, which occupied the deep scattering layer of our global oceans they're super interesting fish because they have complex scattering patterns, some of them bear swim bladders some of them have lipid filled swim bladders that change across on the genetic stages. They're super important to the global carbon cycle and we're learning about their distribution towards towards the Arctic as we expect warmer waters to be kind of moving their way further and further north. And the other fish that I study is polar cod, which is the most important fish underneath the ice. And it's not a challenging species to study using acoustics, because mostly we have to measure them under the ice. So we typically use things like moorings. And so yeah my career is kind of the combination has been a combination over the last eight years of fishery science, biological oceanography and marine ecology. Next slide please. And so during my PhD, I have continued to use my acoustics as a tool for consulting. I've been out there have been needing folks to do data processing so that's kind of what I've supplemented my income with. And most recently I joined ASL environmental sciences. And so ASL is a small company in Victoria that manufactures the acoustic zooplankton and fish profiler. So it's primarily a manufacturing firm that's been selling these products to scientists for many years now. We have a field services division where we deploy and recover moorings for folks. But most recently, the company has decided to move towards data processing. And I've been hired as the first biologist at the company to lead their biological studies consulting program. And it's actually helped students work, I mean certainly not students, clients work with echo sounders to understand the spatial and vertical distribution of zooplankton and fish and their studies help them design their studies, do the analyses and developing software for automation and things like that. Next slide please. And just to give a kind of a broad overview of the tools that I use in acoustics. I use, I use all mounted acoustics on ships to map spatial patterns. Most recently I've been focused on the deep scattering layer and mesopelagic fish and zooplankton in Canada's high arc Canada's sub Arctic and higher to environments, mostly in the Labrador sea but moving all the way up to northern Greenland. I also use vertical profilers so we mounts autonomous echo sounders to CTD rosettes are on standalone probes. And we do this to kind of get more continuous profile of the full water column so we can actually look at deeply scattered individual targets within the deep scattering layer and below. And then a lot of the work I've done over the last several years has been the deployment of moorings and analysis of these moorings underneath the ice along around Bath and Bay, working with folks in the Beaufort sea in Greenland. So I just measure the kind of temporal processes over the season, particularly we're interested in what's happening during periods when the ice breaks during periods when ice melts. So yeah, these are the, these are the tools that I've been using over the last several years. Thanks. All right, we're going to move into the question and answer portion of our panel. Now, and I think that everybody did a really good job of saying what experience or experiences have them in the field or inspired them to get into the field. But just so we get this in our transcript formally. I'd like each panelist to go through and answer the question what courses, experiences, or skill development opportunities, best prepared you for an ocean acoustics career, and I'm going to go in the opposite direction right now and ask more to start. courses so the courses I had at scripts, I think we're really useful. I remember a computational ocean acoustics course from Cooperman that I model my graduate level propagation course after that one was really important for me, I think. And also, I hadn't realized. Before I started a graduate program right, I think one of the difficult things about this field is that there's so many things you have to know, because you need to know some oceanography, you need to know some physics, and you need to know some signal processing right which is really engineering. And so I don't think anybody comes in with all of those skills, right and so I think the important pieces, you know, putting those, putting all of those together and I think most people end up, you know, leaning in one direction but you really have to have a working knowledge of all these different areas. And I also took digital signal processing which is the first I, you know, had heard of that when I was in graduate school as well. So I think that's also a really important, important class to take. And yeah, like I said, I mean, for experiences really was that internship that got me and I think internships are just hugely important for for students right for, you know, for actually doing something not just sitting in a classroom and doing something where you can see yourself contributing to the science. Thank you. Andrea, do you have a follow up question or because I want to hear from all the panels on this question before we go to another question. Yes, I have a follow up for Laura. Okay, so Laura, since your situation is a little unique because now you're an assistant professor. So I'm curious if you could also answer the question from the perspectives that made of the students that maybe join your group. So what are some of the courses or experiences that they come in that best prepare them to work with you. In particular. Yes, that's a really good question. And, and, you know, like my answer is kind of based on the way that I mentor. They come in an ocean engineering and they're not required to take any digital signal processing so a lot of my students, I send them to the electrical engineering department and I say, you know, take some DSP. I think that's really important. I also recommend that they take oceanography. Pretty, you know, pretty soon on because I think it helps give a better understanding for for the acoustics and you know how, why it matters right and how it can apply differently in different situations. So I think it's important to take that kind of zoomed out view to understand why you're doing what you're doing. Thank you. Perfect thanks. I'm going to go to Hillary because we're just going to hear from all panelists on this question. So for my job I think the most useful skill from my academic life is being able to write and communicate. So kind of very different from what Laura just said but yeah, I have to basically distill technical information into a way that the public can can understand it and use it so I think. I think I'll just leave it at that writing. Thank you, Shannon. So I'd say I particularly I would I found the most useful in terms of coursework probably been the ocean mapping and underwater acoustics courses that I took that took a unit unh those definitely gave me I think even just like a lot of confidence in terms of what I understand about the world of acoustics especially in underwater acoustics. I also really appreciate I guess this is kind of echoing what some others said earlier but in terms of especially in my master's degree I got to do a lot of, you know my own field work and design my own experiment and everything which I think is kind of rare for a lot of people in terms of their masters a lot of people are just handed some data and told to do some analysis so I think. Yeah more masters degree with an experimental design component is always good and I think that really helped me quite a bit. Yeah and signal processing as well as a big one that kind of anybody in acoustics I sometimes I find it kind of funny that you know say at ASA there is a single processing section because it's like well we all do signals processing in a way but so yeah definitely always digital signal processing. Thank you. Yeah, I my answer is pretty similar to Laura's but if I have to make it slightly different. It's that my background is mechanical engineering but the courses that helped me most with acoustics were the ones in computer science and electrical engineering, both at the undergraduate undergraduate level. So those looked more like just your basic computer science classes all the way up to statistical learning artificial intelligence machine learning. And I felt that that background has given me the most independence as a researcher and being able to think about not just here's how I run an acoustic model but since my background is more platforms and underwater vehicles. How do I combine the or how do I integrate the mind of an acquisition into metrics or algorithms to operate on a vehicle independent. So those experiences like first building some really small, not so intelligent ocean sensor platform, all the way up to working on, you know, a quite large, you know, 21 21 inch bluefin that the range of the experiences is what's most helpful over the initial part of my career. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, I think I have maybe quite a different perspective from the rest of the panelists. I, the strengths in my early career and I think what's led to the opportunities has been my experience in working in the field and implementing data collection. From the computational side and the understanding about theory and signal processing. A lot of it's been just a journey on my own, to be honest. There was a couple of instrumental courses that kind of were pivot points. One, I took an international council for the exploration of the seas, also known as ICES. They hosted a course on acoustic abundance estimation, led by John Horn and Paul Fernandez. There's only one week course in Copenhagen, but I went there and learned about using statistics to estimate the abundance of fish populations during standardized surveys. That's kind of a great starting point. But it's really been individual kind of small workshops. I'll put a plug in for Ocean Hack Week that Wu Zhang was leading, going there meeting other folks that are working from the signal processing side of things in the computational side of things. I took that perspective and gave me new directions to kind of investigate on my own, but I haven't had really any courses in in acoustics. Apart from a one another one week workshop at University of Maine where actually an optical oceanographer manual boss taught us about wave theory and that's kind of where where I kind of got my foundation and understanding about wave theory. Excellent. Thank you. I'm going to turn it over to another panel member to ask a question they may have. Go ahead Gail your hand is up. You're on mute. You're on mute. Thank you. I have a question that's opposite to Jen's question. You could have had a course or an opportunity that would have better prepared you for your career. If wishes were horses in other words, what courses would you wish you could have taken. People can just jump in on this one. Go ahead Gail. Yeah, that's a great question Gail. I think as other others have mentioned to be successful in this field you have to have a combination of oceanography physics signal processing. And contextual kind of understanding of what you're studying to be really good. But if there was a specific course and I've heard great things about this Friday Harbor course I think some of the folks here were trained there. There was a course hosted a Friday Harbor which is like a month long bioacoustics course that included both passive and active acoustics. And it just sounded like a great, a great immersive course that gave folks the experience and I think my generation is probably missing out on that opportunity to do an in depth course like that. And it's something that I'm trying to kind of boost some energy around recreating that by getting folks. Yeah, the experience of working on the water, collecting the data and then understanding the theory behind it. Andrea, your hand is up. Do you have another question or did you want to follow? I do. I do. I'll ask after. So, yeah, we'll keep going on which opportunities or courses do you wish you could have had? For me, I think maybe more on the computer science end of things. So like even things like where in my company we use Git for all our change, tracking in our code base. And so that was very new to me and something that I had to kind of learn on the job as I go. And I think maybe in academia since you're kind of working on your own, you don't worry too much about collaboration tools but kind of learning how to use Git and collaborate in that sense would be great. And I kind of also wish I had learned maybe some other programming languages other outside of MATLAB and Python. So C, kind of some faster I guess programming languages that we end up using in industry. And so I kind of wish I was able to directly write my code and see instead of kind of writing it in MATLAB and then we kind of pass it over to our software developers who kind of either write around it and see or even rewrite some of it and see. So, for me, some more computer science focus. Laura? Yeah, I'll say, you know, I think when you're in graduate school, your, your classwork can be very focused on your research area. Right. So I feel very confident about my research area. But acoustics is such a broad topic that I feel like I probably know enough to be dangerous in a lot of different areas. Right. But for example, like transducers, I've never taken a transducers class. And so, you know, I, I know what I know about transducers and I can apply some things but I've never had any formal education on that topic. Right. And that's the way that a lot of people interact with acoustics right so through so in our systems and things like that. I think a course in that would be useful. I don't have a specific course in mind but I just feel like I would have wanted to take a deeper dive into into most of the topics that everybody else has shared. Like I feel like I got a pretty superficial understanding of just about everything that I needed, but I feel like sometimes, you know, if I, if I had a deeper dive into something, it might have stuck better and I might be able to pivot into another direction. But for example, in, in my agency, we have like a biology team and then we have an acoustic modeling team. And, and though I, I could probably stretch into the modeling side. I just, I didn't take a deep enough dive that I feel completely comfortable doing that but of course you know like everything else you can't know everything so you just have to kind of learn it as you go but that's my thoughts on that. Lisa, I think I would, it's funny, I've never taken a robotics class, even though that was probably what my PhD was. And the thing I'm thinking about in terms of the robotics is everything we're doing in the field is these integrated systems and our field in particular, we're doing integrated systems on the edge of where they're all going to fail in the water under the ice, what have you. And so being able to have a more professional background in saying this is how you make something and make it work consistently in the ocean instead of feeling like helping everything together, would give me a lot more confidence in going forward in projects that didn't have to rely so heavily on data analysis, modeling, simulation. Awesome, thank you. Andrea, do you want to go with our next question? Sure. So, a couple of you mentioned having opportunities to do short courses or trainings outside kind of your formal education. And I'm curious if you one could elaborate on how you found those, how were you aware of those opportunities and then to kind of the value that you got out of them. And how that supplemented your more formal educational path. Go ahead, Hila. Thanks. I think, I think just being aware of the different, like working in fisheries, for instance, being aware of the different management agencies and the kind of the work that they're doing, there's a lot of working groups and cooperative reports out there. That are really, I mean, they're like, bibles to me for solving sonar problems. And so I think those working groups are a great start. I joined the working group for fisheries, acoustic science and technology, which didn't really require any challenges to enter. I mean, I was, I'm a practitioner. And so they said, sure, you can join. And through that, they posted a very, very basic email list, an occasional newsletter, and they would share those courses and I would jump on them immediately apply, try to get student funding. And both of the two or three of the external courses I took, I took one on fisheries, acoustic abundance estimation with ICs, I took a geostatistics course with a heavy hand in in acoustics. And, and this ocean hack week, and each of them provided student funding for me to go. And it was very easy, easy for me to participate in those. Sorry, you had another second part to your question, did I answer that. You touched on it. So just how it supplemented your formal education. Yeah, I think they were really powerful. And they, not only did they give me the tools I need to train but also just gave me a different perspective. Just in the instance ocean hack week showed me, there's a whole computational side of this encoding in which we can solve problems and there's ways to do this, working in teams that I hadn't really seen before because I've been working on my own, a lot, doing a lot of my own problem solving so that was great. So yeah, any other panelists want to jump up Hillary. Yeah, sure. So I did the, the CBAS program which Jen could tell you the, what the acronym means, but it's basically a a one week bioacoustic crash course in bioacoustics and the organizers bring in, you know, like 10 different representatives from the field including people from the government, including academic researchers and just just younger, generally it seems younger folks in the field that are, you know, are able to connect with students and possibly even take on students so in that sense. For me, it was critical in actually breaking into the field of bioacoustics because before that, before I had the opportunity to attend that. Yeah, I wasn't in the field I was doing a master's in math. But for me it was absolutely critical in getting into this field and I'm so thankful that someone I was on the wait list and so someone else decided they needed to do fieldwork and I got to go in and so I think my whole life dependent on that. But yeah so networking was a really big thing for me for that and I suspect for other people. I also mentioned that they brought in people from the Bureau that I now work for and that was the first time I'd ever even heard of them. And they were absolutely wonderful people and yes, that paved the way for me wanting to work here, eventually. So, all those soft but important aspects of a course. There was also a lot of good information in the course too. Laura Shannon or me Sean would jump in Laura does. Sure, I don't, I haven't taken any short courses like that like most of my education was you know through graduate school but also through, um, through cruises, I loved going to see and so this was, I think pretty well known about me when I was in graduate school I wanted to be on any cruise that anybody had. And I think I learned so much from that. So it's not a formal course, but there's a lot of experience that you gain just from, you know, being being on a boat for a month. You know, you learn a lot that you never would in a classroom or a short course like that. And I also want to emphasize what Hillary said to about, you know, these, these networking opportunities you get to know people on a different level when you spend a month on a cruise, right. And, and so those connections to are also really, really important. I'm also the acoustical side of America I think is a really great society is great way to network and their website also has a lot of these opportunities, you know that people can find out about them. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on Laura said yeah I didn't really mention the cruises I mean, I spent a crazy amount of time at sea over the last six years that has been instrumental in my problem solving and think about things. One example of a kind of hybrid cruise educational opportunity that I did was the Sentinel North PhD school that's based out of the University of LaValle in Canada. Obviously it's not an American example but I've seen American examples pop up but these these graduate student training schools on the ship are so so so important and the one I did gave us experience in all different types of instrumentation. But also we had projects and we worked on a paper together we wrote together. And I think that was huge so there's definitely an understated part I think of training is going out to see. And it's also challenging when when talking about how do you create opportunities for students. Not everybody can go to sea. Some people just get seasick some people just can't do it because of family obligations so I don't think that that should be the one, but it was a driver for me and it sounds like it was for Laura to. I would add on there, exactly as was pointed out I didn't get to go to see that often, but a lot of our field work was on the river, you know, next to the campus or when we were down at Huey, we would drive to a nearby pond and throw something in the water. And so I actually did my scientific training to be able to recover vehicles that we lost while we were working with them. And so having a very accessible body of water to put things put your platforms in. And it's not like a month long thing but it's that you can show up and we're here all day. Come as you please and figure out how you can help out anyway. That was a really very informal part of why I'm here today. And I thought of another point to share if we still have time. Okay. Yeah, I attended this program, another week long class at the University of Buffalo and I, I'll have to look up the name and send it to you it was really long but it was hosted there but and I think they have a linguistics program. So the program wasn't actually like marine bio acoustics, it was just acoustics in general and a lot to do with signal processing and so there were people there that were studying birds there were people there that studied speech. And, and then there were people like me that studied marine mammal bio acoustics so that was really unique in that sense that we we all had like, you know the the same computational problems to solve but but different context for for what that was. And so it was just really interesting to get in a room with people that you know have this common theme of acoustics but, but different needs for it. And I think that I think Laura brought it up before about the acoustical society of American. And I think that's another great aspect of that society is just that you're you get people with that common interest of acoustics but there's just so many ways to spin it. So that that's super valuable. Any other comments on this question. One, one twice. All right, thank you Andrea carol and your hands up for the next question. So let's move away from the education component because we all went to grad school and we all did our thing and we all took trainings and everything so I'm kind of interested more in sort of your perspective is relatively early career people on the health of the field writ large emotion and whether that's informed by say your experience looking for jobs or how many people you see around you in the field, or the nature of the work that's available to people who are trained like you're trained, etc. So just kind of leave it open ended. So, your interest, can you just phrase that as a question Carolyn. No, I can't so maybe someone else or just forget it. No, no, that's, I think, are you asking about what the, the panelists think are the current job markets in their area of expertise. I'm not necessarily I'm asking about the generalized health of the field when I was an early, early career solar geophysicist. I knew the field was basically dying so I abandoned a, and became a range of physicists and, and that was obvious from the funding streams it was obvious from the number of people going into it it was for obvious from the lack of ability to act acoustics in the ocean, etc. I'm asking sort of what the senses of the health of the field but whether that can be informed by what the job market is like or how many people they see around them at their career stage or something like that. Perfect, that's a great question. Who wants to jump in first. I'll jump in. So, I think, I think it's healthy so I, when my students graduate. I have a lot of people contacting me to ask, you know, do you have any students who are graduating soon, but I think a lot of that is influenced by where I'm at so I'm in Rhode Island and there is the Naval undersea warfare center, you know, right across the day, and there's a lot of defense contractors located in the area. So, in that sector, I think there are a lot of opportunities, because I think a lot of that workforce is nearing retirement. And so I think they are actively looking for, you know, talent to fill those roles. And I think there is a little bit of a hole. I joke with friends of mine we look around at the acoustical society of America and I still feel like, you know, one of the younger ones that a lot of the time right. I think there is a little bit of a hole in this mid career, you know, age group of the workforce. But I think the need is definitely there. And I think for students coming up I think they will have a lot of opportunities, particularly in the defense sector where I'm at but I think maybe other people want to comment about other sectors as well. I'll jump in. Thanks. Yeah. So I would say I'm adjacent to the defense sector. And similarly, all my mentors have been great and they've all been semi retired or on the customer retirement. Well, I've been under that I think I'm the last student for a couple of them. And it's been a privilege to be under a long chain of where it's every time I go to ASI meeting. And they are easy to meet people who are in the same circles. That being said, when I was looking for jobs, I wasn't trying to find something that was purely in the defense sector. I'm really most motivated by what's the kind of ocean technologies we can use that are going to be important as our oceans continue to change in the next 1020 years. It's harder time seeing how ocean acoustics itself plays a role in that, especially in terms of let's say in sort of carbon mitigation, but maybe more so on the quantification side. So in my head, I'm, I'm betting on ocean technology being quite important, but I wouldn't necessarily even call myself an acquisition more of a technologist where acoustics is the first thing I go to in my toolkit. You look you had your hand up. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I've got two lines of thinking on this. One is your question about the health of the field and I think I think about this quite often because I don't really know how to assess the health of the field and I'm kind of I have the privilege of being able to compare Canada and the US. I've worked in both both environments, but one thought that I have about just the health of any field really is looking back at the history of what I do fisheries acoustics or biological hydro acoustics. One measure of health might be how how much is the field making an impact on science outside of its field. And so they used to be that people could publish methodological papers to the cows came home. They would just improve their methods new target strength models, things like that. I think the health of the field to see it grow you would see people moving away from methodological applications and moving towards, you know, ecological insights. What this means to carbon what this means to to sustainability what this means to fisheries and I don't think I'm seeing enough of that in our field per se. And so in terms of health, I think we might be kind of just spinning the same wheels over and over again and sure it's employing people and getting them to think about tough questions. But in terms of impact to the field. I'm a little bit worried about the future in that sense. As a from a Canadian microcosm, right, because there's not nearly as many institutions on our side. There's probably only handful of people that do the type of analysis that I do, not that I think mine are particularly challenging, but there just aren't really many acquisitions in the country. So I work for one of the only firms that does hydro acoustics as a service. And I'm approached frequently by academic institutions and nonprofits from around the say the global north who need who need data processing skills. And what I think about the future of my position at the company, for instance, I don't know who I'm going to hire. I don't know if we as we expand, I don't really know that there is like a university that's pumping out students that have the skills ready to enter the workforce as at the level that it's needed. So, yeah, I think that case might be a little bit different in the US. We have a wider range of diversity. There's obviously a lot of universities in the US that have acoustical training where folks with signal processing and computer science skills can probably jump in and do the work that I do fairly quickly. But oftentimes those folks don't have the, I would say the level of confidence in biological studies to really apply their skills. Thank you Shannon has her hand up next. Yeah, I would agree quite a bit with you there I guess I am on more of the Canadian side of things than anything. But I think it's a little bit similar in the US and that I think there's lots of jobs or possible industries that could use the acoustic. I think there's actually a very difficult kind of like maybe pipeline to get those with the expertise to industry so for example when I joined crack and they actually didn't have an advertisement or anything they weren't like actively searching for new scientists but they just kind of sent my resume to them and they wanted to hire me and they specifically told me they're like yeah we don't put out advertisements for scientists, especially in the acoustics area because it's so difficult to find them it was like you know the chances of one being available when we decide to put up a listing is quite low and so from like my experience it's very much that companies would like to have the site of expertise but they're so hard to find that they're not often very actively advertising for them and so they more just go off of you know chance connections that they happen to come across. So I think maybe that's an area where we can prove is trying to match those things up a little bit better so you don't have to kind of really try to hunt down your own connections to get a job in the sector that is definitely needing that definitely has jobs available. Thank you, and Hillary did you have anything on this question before we move to the next. Yeah, sure. I mean, I would say, from, from my perspective. There's a healthy need for acousticians bio acousticians, you know in the government in industry, anything related to anthropogenic noise and, and impacts to marine life. Yeah, it's, it's a growing. It's definitely growing with offshore wind so I see the jobs out there being endless but yes, like tackle what everyone else is saying the bodies to fill those roles. Yeah, I think there are some people but will there be enough, probably not. Thank you. I think you have your hand up for another panel question or a committee question sorry. So my question is more of a follow up to what we have just been talking about, because a lot of you mentioned that you sort of stumble upon the opportunities to go into acoustics right and then like some of the panelists mentioned that, you know, depending on which industry you're from or which perspective you're from, you may or may not may not seen a lot of needs from sort of different different sectors. Like what do you think from your perspective that can change that in a way like if, if there's a need for people on specific areas. How do you think can be done to maybe expose more people to know about this field right because a lot of people sort of stuff on stumble upon it and so so what do you think can be changed. I'll start with that one, just because I've seen it within the past week. So I, I think it one strategy is to target people who are already in the general area. So I teach in an ocean engineering department. The course I teach is for undergraduates. It's an undergraduate underwater acoustics course and it's required of all ocean engineers whether they're going to be going into robotics, whether they're interested in you know offshore wind, you know whether they're interested in waves and so I've had this right where it's a it's a pretty general course, it's crammed into one semester right and it's kind of half physics right and snails law sounds be profiles, things like that sonar equation and then it's kind of half single processing so they do FFTs spectrograms match filters right and so I pull my class I've actually done this within the past week you know I try to see you know what are the most important things that you've thought you've learned over the course of the semester and a lot of them come back with comments like I never thought about it before right like I just it never crossed my radar sonar right and it was I would have been in the same boat. And so I've had students you know say I'm interested in this now this is something that I would like to pursue. And so I think a lot of it is that exposure, right, and, and I love that course right for that reason because you know most of them they have no idea why they're there right they have no idea why they need to know about underwater acoustics but I try to emphasize you know no matter what you're going into if you're doing it in the ocean chances are you're going to be using sound at some point. Right, and so, you know that that's from a from a more pedagogical point of view I guess you know put it in the curriculum. But, but also internships I think are great. Other panelists have want to respond to that question. Yeah I can just add on to that a little bit. I think I think oceanography courses are probably the best way in the acoustics. And I think, like, for instance, I've been invited to to instruct at a biological during an oceanography course here at the Banfield Marine Science Center that's form based. It's an undergraduate course. And we've got a physical oceanographer and a biological oceanographer and they wanted to kind of meld the two by including acoustics. And so that's kind of something that I'm going to introduce but I think if if if acoustics became part of general oceanographic curriculum, because it's such an important aspect of understanding physical and biological processes, just kind of standardized like just across the board then I think we probably get a lot more folks who get inspired by things like the sonaric agent and what they can tell us about big ocean processes. Thank you. You shown heads his hand up. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that element of chance. I think that's important for the for my answer to is that it just so happened at the undergraduate institution I went to had a marine lab. I think going forward if we're trying to attract a broader audience, these courses about oceanography can only be in places that are on the ocean, can only be in places that have many months, because most people who are interested in stem or whatever you want to call it don't go to places that are on the water. That's a huge privilege that really filters who gets into the field in the first place. Let's move on to the question. Yeah, one thing I guess maybe I'd add is maybe like I think in terms of like some of like you know like place like earth scientists or you know, you know that's kind of my background and I think a lot of earth scientists don't have a lot of confidence in their physics abilities. And so, and especially and maybe I think a lot of people with say biology backgrounds as well but there are people who could be very interested in doing these acoustic analysis so I think maybe really trying to find ways to encourage them to get engaged with it I particularly noticed like say even when I was doing my undergraduate thesis like that was with, you know, going and doing so now like I really knew nothing about so I even told that the RBC for I do it these I was like I know nothing about this and I really didn't understand a lot of it going in but I kind of learned. There's a lot of it along the way, and you know it's not something special about me it is something that any other earth scientists can do but they don't, I think have the confidence in that like a lot of my friends were like oh God I could never do that like I could never. But like you can you just have to have the confidence and the willingness to learn and maybe try some of these subjects that you haven't been so heavily educated and and so maybe like, you know I think maybe like these short courses are good places where you could get earth scientists bio and biology people kind of to learn just enough of the math and the physics that they need to be able to do some acoustics type studies and give them a little bit more confidence like yeah I can learn some signal processing and then maybe they'll go take more courses. Once they've seen they can learn some of it in a mini course. Thank you. I saw other fans from our committee members go up and down. Someone again. No quite how I raise my hand on this. Sure, go ahead. Let me ask a question. Students and early career people. My perception is that the depth of math and physics that is now being taught at universities and thinking what I'm familiar with. It's certainly not as deep field that I experienced the experience of many decades ago. For example, one in math I give an example it was routine for someone in my field electrical engineering to take a course in complex variables. Someone in physics. I had a number of courses and quantum mechanics. That depth being taught today's undergraduates. The reason I bring it up is. I have found subjects such as that to be incredibly useful and hopping from fields to field and enabling a background where you can enter these fields. Without a lot of entry fees. And I'm just wondering the opinion of our audience here or our colleagues here. What is their perception of they adequately trained in math and physics, or should we have more. There are people my generation who think it's not quite enough anymore. Obviously, the situation is changing because what is what now exists is that's the boat of the faculty at the curriculum. I think the question is, is there enough math and physics enough math and physics basic math and physics that allow people to go among many career choices throughout their life span. Analysts. I can weigh in. Fillory then Laura then Ishaan. I think it depends on, you know, what, what degree you're talking about like I have a undergrad degree in biology. And if I had stayed in biology, then it would what I had was sufficient which was two statistics classes and calculus. But switching into, you know, acoustics. Absolutely not. I went and got an entire master's degree in math. And then I could use some more. So I think it depends on that. And I guess we're talking about acoustics. So, but, but the thing is there's no, you know, there's no undergrad degree in acoustics right as far as I know. It's maybe ocean engineering or I if oceanography is an undergrad degree I don't think it is I think it's usually masters or PhD levels so yeah, maybe there needs to be an undergrad degree in acoustics or or something more fitting for that transition. Laura. Yeah, I think that's a really good point or and it's something that we talk about in our department a lot. Particularly I have a colleague who does wave analysis and tsunami prediction and he's constantly frustrated that there's a not, you know, good enough math courses math and physics. And I think, I think they are not as rigorous as they used to be. And I think a lot of that may I'm just, I'm just, I've been thinking a lot about this lately, because of chat GPT. Right, we've been having a lot of discussions about what is necessary to know. Right. And what is necessary to be able to apply or to calculate. I wonder if you know the move away from a lot of the rigorous math has been because it has become easier to implement these things computationally. And so I don't know I don't know what the answer. But I think you may be right that it may not be as rigorous as it used to be but I think I think maybe a lot of that maybe because of, you know, computational. The competition for students time can only have your attention for so many hours. The competition for students time. Yes. And what I mean is time at the university, we can only can only teach you so many subjects. Let's hold off on a second question we have two more people wanting to answer the original question first. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the question. I think in my head when you say that you know the math physics of these two pillars of maybe our field. In my head, there's a third now, and it's, it's computational skills. I feel like Don't embarrass little You're probably embarrassed by my answer. That's okay. We can talk about it later. I feel like there's, if you look at the current literature there's very little being done that doesn't necessitate some kind of high computing big model that wasn't available 34 years ago. So it's a valid question and those math and physics principles are embedded in these models people are writing rappers for Fortran models that were originally built right by people who might have just just had these a lot more intense. Undergraduate graduate education. I think the hard part to answer that it's competitive time. What I might have learned in math and physics, I spread out in technology that didn't exist for you. Thank you, Shannon. So I would like, I guess maybe even my previous answer kind of connects to this and that coming from an earth sciences oceanography background I definitely say that we could use more math and physics in those programs. Certainly when I got to grad school I did some auditing of some math courses until I had enough math to actually take some grad level math classes so I definitely played a lot of catch up on the math and coming into grad school. But I would also like to kind of, I got to agree with each on in that I think the other aspect is the computational and like, you know, also just knowing math isn't enough anymore you also have to know how to efficiently and correctly program that and actually, you know, use it And that's actually a much more difficult skill than you might think it is like sometimes I might be reading a paper and I may understand some of the math behind it but if I were to implement it myself that would be a very difficult undertaking. So I think a little bit of both of those would be great. But again it is like a time efficient they see thing like maybe it is better in grad school maybe once you kind of can kind of start to appreciate why you need those things more I certainly didn't appreciate maybe the math as much as I as I should have an undergrad. I didn't take any more than the required math which had similar to Hillary I think was just maybe some stats and some calculus. And so yeah I wish I had some more of those even now. Thank you Shannon. We have about have time for one more question so I want to jump to Lisa she's had her hand up and waiting patiently so Lisa you get the last one. Oh thank you. Hopefully it won't be too much of a long one but thank you all for all this great conversation and your discussions we really appreciate it. I want to pull on a thread that I've heard a little bit before and the potential role of professional societies as a student or as you're building your your careers. Have you been members and did you experience any like short courses or professional development or and or networking opportunities where they remotely helpful in you building your career. You're a professional societies person you like go ahead. Yeah so I think that's actually been the, the place where my inspiration and education has been like most energetic and galvanized has been through societies. It's a very useful. The working group on fisheries acoustic science and technology was a really great one. I tend to conference it feels like a full educational experience that fills a lot of the knowledge gaps that I need and they do provide some short courses. So I think that's for me that's been a major driver and I recognize that's mostly because I'm playing catch up like referring back to past question I'm the guy who looks at the papers with all the equations and kind of freaks out a little bit. So these days you know I'm kind of catching up to that but my journey from being a biologist to being an acquisition has been mostly due to that society or that that working group. Thank you. Yeah, I'll say the professional study as a is the reason why I have and secured a job going forward is through contact initially from field work, but been able to keep in touch with several people over seven, eight years now at ASA meetings. And they're pretty small meeting so it's been able to further professional connections and just be able to see other fields that use acoustics instead of just always be Laura you had your hand up. Yeah, I will also say that I think, you know, membership in professional societies, particularly the Society of America has been invaluable from my career. And when I was a student, I was, you know, the chair for the student group in acoustical oceanography and so it gave me opportunity to, you know, present for that technical committee. And it helped me to meet a lot of people in the field right so I think it was really really important to to get connections. And then Hillary and Shannon. I agree with what everyone has already said about the acoustical Society of America. I only actually went to one conference in person but just from that one experience alone I ended up with the internship with the acoustics today journal. I ended up being the student council representative for animal bio acoustics moving forward. So yeah, I haven't been back to a conference during my professional life but I hope to just trying to get everything under control first and Shannon. Yeah, not a whole lot to add on my and yeah ASA is great. I really like IEEE conferences as well that they tend to be a little bit larger, but you know sometimes in your smaller sessions you can make those connections. Yeah, other than that like outside of some of these professional institutions I've actually had a lot of interactions even say just on LinkedIn I think is actually still a very relevant place to have a profile and say especially if you're interested in industry so a lot of people have contacted me through LinkedIn about job opportunities and things from the industry and so I find maybe like ASA's and conferences are great for kind of your academic connections but for industry they're not always quite so present they might be a little more present at say IEEE conferences. Yeah. All right, thank you. I'm going to because we're you everybody's had a first chance to answer here but what I'm going to do is, instead of asking another question, we're going to just ask for last comments from our panelists so we respect everybody's time and then somewhat on time. In one or two sentences, if you have a last thought that you would like to impart to this committee, what would it be? Go ahead you'll look. First I just want to say thank you for the invitation. This has been super interesting and fun and it's great to see a bunch of new faces which I've never seen before. I will say that when it comes to solution that I think the problem that we're trying to solve here, whether it be a working group or a course, it's really interesting to see how we all differ so much in terms of our backgrounds and I don't think there's a solution for everybody here in the room like we all would probably have a lot to talk about over beers, but I don't know if we would like a short course would be able to fix any of our kind of lack of education because we all do such different things. And so, yeah, I just want to impart that whatever solution to education comes up with is really dependent has to be kind of diverse has to have multiple options to address the people who don't do so well in math and science classes but do really well in the field and vice versa. There's, there's multifaceted ways to solve this problem. And I agree with you and I just want to let you know that the, the committee's task really is to assess and recommend. I don't think that this committee of just five or six or seven I can't remember how many we are is going to solve anything, but I hope that we do a good job of putting recommendations out there at the end that other agencies sectors people academia can think about solving or at least improving moving forward. Last thoughts from others. I could go next I guess maybe my last thought is kind of coming towards the end of my master's I was, you know really searching around like trying to find a job or anything but we know when I kind of went to Tony was like, I can't find any jobs that you are advertising for your master's and oceanography like, should I just do a PhD and Tony my advisor his kind but he said to me that really stuck with me is that like nobody knows you as like in all your specialized know knowledge exists like people just don't know that your skills don't even exist necessarily. And so they're going to have to meet you first and find out what you're capable of, and then they'll want to hire you. And I found that to be very true a lot of the kind of opportunities have come my way have been from people kind of like talking to them and then finding them finding out what kinds of skills I have and then I'm being like oh you'd actually fit really great. Yeah, so I think maybe we need to find more ways to kind of bridge that connection in terms of both making students aware of what they need to find a job I think especially coming out of grad school your skills start to become so specialized and specific. It's going to be hard to find that match and then the same thing on the industry side I think if there's a lot of confusion as to like, you know what type of skills industries even looking for as well and so yeah I don't have anything specific other than my experience at the end of my degree was navigating that area was a little confusing and I think maybe even like letting students know like you're going to have to really try and find your niche and find your own. You know, positions might be important to know and that just because they're not kind of visible on the surface doesn't mean they don't exist just might have to dig around a bit. Thank you. Laura Hillary e-shot one or two sentences on on thoughts. Yes, sir. I was going to just say when we were talking about conferences right that I think they're so important. Also because nobody gets into ocean acoustics or engineering because they like to present. They like to write. And so I think it also gives students a good opportunity to do those things which they will be doing throughout their career. And the ASA in particularly has built, you know, a pretty friendly atmosphere. And I think that is so important moving forward is this idea of, you know, having a community. Nobody, nobody gets where they are on their own. And so I think it's really important to have, you know, opportunities for mentorship and, you know, bringing up younger people in the field and lifting them up right and showing that it's not it's not a competition right we shouldn't be competing with, you know, people who are just entering the field but helping them along and mentoring them. Thank you. You saw. Yeah, thank you. We didn't get to chat about this today but in this, I guess in assessing and recommending the ocean acoustics workforce in its future. I hope the committee has time to also delve into the demographics of that workforce and the pipelines that contribute to the workforce. Yep, that is actually the word diverse is actually in our statement of work and we will have a panel on that later. And the survey that the committee is work with a consultant to go out to the the general community as a whole, which will come out next week started with ASA. There's a lot of questions related to demographics and how we can better track that understand it. So when that survey comes out I'm sure you'll all get a copy of it. So send it to as many people as you can because the more information we have, the more we'll be able to address that diversity issue of all types. Good point. I'm not sure that I have a great answer but to the point about diversity, I guess I, I would just maybe encourage you guys to, to reach out beyond the ocean acoustic community maybe to the broader acoustic community there's a lot to learn from, you know, parallel fields and, and what is or isn't working in those and pull that in. So I guess just, you know, keep thinking outside of the box like if we keep talking to only people that share our common experience then we might not gain as much as if we can, you know, find ways to reach out just a little bit further so not much to offer there other than think, think outside of us. So that is a great recommendation and one of the things you'll also see in that survey is we've talked amongst ourselves and settled on some language ocean acoustics and supporting disciplines. And so all of that contributes to our knowledge in ocean acoustics and how we define those supporting disciplines is ever expanding. So over time, I apologize for five minutes being over. That's my job, but I wanted to take this time to thank all of our panelists and all of our committee members for taking time out of their day to share their thoughts and their path and their opinions about the future. And we hope to do the best job that we can in incorporating all of those as we move forward. Anybody from the committee want to say any parting words. So I, I'll be quiet now. This is Gail. I just want to also say thanks. This was a very interesting conversation and I certainly learned a lot from you guys and keep doing the good work that you're doing. And I hope to see so many of you as a next week. Okay, thanks. Thanks everybody. And just one note for committee members please jump over to the other zoom link for our closed session but thank you all to the panelists really appreciate your time to echo Jen's comments. Thank you. Have a great day everybody.