Prof. Pierre Lermusiaux

Lermusiaux's interdisciplinary research focuses on physical ocean dynamics and methods of estimating and assimilating data. His research group creates and utilizes fundamental mathematical models and computational schemes for ocean prediction, for dynamical diagnostics, optimization and control of autonomous ocean observation systems, and for data assimilation and data-model comparisons. The Ph.D. students in his group develop novel adaptive sampling methodologies, derive new prognostic equations for stochastic ocean fields of large dimensions, incubate the next generation of computational ocean models, and explore fundamental biogeochemical fluid dynamics in straits.

In 2009, the MIT Sea Grant College Program selected Pierre Lermusiaux, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering's Center for Ocean Engineering, as the recipient of the 2009 Doherty Professorship in Ocean Utilization. Lermusiaux's Doherty-funded project aimed to advance the concept of adaptive sampling using swarms of smart autonomous underwater vehicles. The project combines concepts from physical-biogeochemical ocean dynamics and modeling; dynamical system theory; uncertainty prediction; decision-making under uncertainty; artificial intelligence; bio-inspired behaviors with the emergence of global properties; and distributed computing.