Q&A with the Great Lakes Research Center’s Timothy Havens

Timothy Havens is the new director of the Excellent Lakes Research Centre.

Timothy Havens arrived to Michigan Technological University as an electrical and personal computer
engineering researcher. As of January one, he’s now the director of the Excellent Lakes
Research Centre (GLRC), in addition to continuing his roles as director of the Institute
of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC) and the William and Gloria Jackson Professor in
Computer system Science. Havens succeeds outgoing GLRC director Andrew Barnard.

“I am very happy that Tim has stepped up and recognized the directorship of the
Excellent Lakes Research Centre,” said Dave Reed, Michigan Tech’s Vice President for Research.
“Tim has been a pretty effective chief of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems
for several several years and I am self-confident he will provide that expertise and tactic to
the GLRC.”

We not too long ago sat down with Havens to focus on the long run of the GLRC and his part at
Michigan Tech.

Q: Why were you selected as the next GLRC director?

TH: My expertise in getting a researcher and analysis administrator performs perfectly with
getting the director of the GLRC. I’m at the moment the director of the ICC and was the
affiliate dean of analysis for the Higher education of Computing, with each models observing significant
development in the course of my management. A single of our goals in the ICC has been to mature into a sustainable,
self-supporting device with exceptional help for our scientists, often employing the GLRC
as an case in point. We have built significant strides toward this purpose, not too long ago selecting
a total-time assistant director for analysis development. I’m excited I now get the
prospect to guide the center we’ve been employing as a part product.

Q: Your preceding analysis has been concentrated on computing and cybersystems. What does
that have to do with Excellent Lakes analysis?

TH: To be a profitable analysis administrator, just one needs to be a robust researcher
but not automatically in any particular region. My expertise permits me to arrive into the
directorship with the significant-amount check out important to leverage means in artistic
ways, such as new vessels and analysis platforms, next-generation computing and skilled
staff. Research centers are organizations, and the facets of balancing persons, infrastructure
and means are largely the similar, no subject the analysis focus.

That said, I do Excellent Lakes analysis. I’ve worked with the U.S. Navy for several several years,
building sign processing for detecting objects beneath and on the h2o and ice
employing acoustics. The relationship of my analysis to the GLRC is additional on the techy facet,
but I’m cognizant of and strongly help all of the center’s analysis and I’m actually
thrilled to study additional about the locations I have not but had direct connections with.
Also, I appear ahead to connecting my land-based mostly robotics analysis to the GLRC:
maritime autonomy, sensible ships and the Marine Autonomy Research Web-site.

Q: What do you do in your operate?

TH: I guide the Sample Recognition and Clever Equipment Engineering lab. For numerous
several years I’ve been doing the job with the Department of Protection and field partners on challenging
sensing problems. For case in point, detecting explosive dangers, building AI that can
forecast auto malfunctions perfectly right before a check out engine light-weight turns on, and how to
make robots additional robust to sensor malfunctions or malfeasance, to title a few.

In my analysis I’m investigating how to pull data out when beneficial data are
concealed powering the noise. I just take those people data and flip them into selections — “You must
almost certainly just take your auto in to check out its transmission inside the next one,000 miles,”
for case in point.

Q: How does your operate relate to the other analysis at the GLRC?

TH: Equipment finding out is relevant approximately all over the place. I just take data and produce implicit
products that can make selections with those people data: predictions, assessments, diagnostics,
and many others. Dr. Pengfei Xue and I have previously started off conversing about how we can combine my
AI analysis with his hydrodynamic products, enabling both far better or additional economical
predictions about important indicators of local climate adjust in the Excellent Lakes. When I boil
down what I enjoy about analysis, it is that I enjoy to resolve puzzles — there are tons
of challenging and critical puzzles to resolve with GLRC scientists and I appear ahead
to the collaborations.

Q: What is your eyesight for the long run of the GLRC?

TH: We must definitely feel about increasing our creating! The GLRC is striving to
become the premier analysis establishment on campus, each in terms of the excellence
in analysis getting done and also in the help that GLRC employees provide to campus
scientists. The college and employees and their numerous analysis are at the major of their
fields. The center will not only carry on to force the envelope about what can be learned
about Excellent Lakes and coastal oceans techniques, but also appear for alternatives in the
uncharted waters of sophisticated, real-world problems that involve many-disciplinary
strategies to resolve.

 

Michigan Technological University is a public analysis university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is residence to additional than 7,000 learners from 55 international locations close to the world. Continually ranked amid the ideal universities in the country for return on financial investment, the University provides additional than one hundred twenty five undergraduate and graduate degree courses in science and know-how, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, well being professions, humanities, arithmetic, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is positioned just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, presenting calendar year-round alternatives for outside adventure.