Senior Research Engineer

Ph.D.: Stanford University, Stanford, CA (Electrical Engineering, Experimental radio science and signal processing) 1993

M.S.: Stanford University, Stanford, CA (Electrical Engineering, Computer systems and networks) 1987

B.S.: Stanford University, Stanford, CA (Electrical Engineering) 1985

Dr. Bill Burgess designed the first microprocessor-based acoustic recording tag for marine wildlife in 1994. He created the first commercial acoustic recording tags, the Acousonde™ and its predecessor the Bioacoustic Probe™, leading the industrial design, writing the software operating systems, and designing all analog and digital electronics. These instruments have been used by over sixteen marine research and engineering organizations located in the United States and abroad, not only for the study of protected species but also for marine geophysics, underwater vehicle development, officer training, and the monitoring of offshore oil production facilities. Dr. Burgess' technical background includes geophysical remote sensing with low-frequency radio, bioacoustics, audio‑frequency signal processing, and both hardware and software systems architecture. His field experience includes over seven months at remote sites in Antarctica, northern Québec, and the Alaskan Arctic, and over four months at sea on research vessels in Arctic, Antarctic, Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico waters. He has acquired and analyzed acoustic data from jet aircraft, rockets, missiles, vessels, airguns, and pile drivers, and collaborated on the analysis of acoustic and kinematic data recorded by his tags on whales, seals, and sharks. Dr. Burgess conducted ocean acoustic research under postdoctoral scholarships at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). He is a member of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society, the Society for Marine Mammalogy, and the American Geophysical Union, and chaired special sessions on animal-bioacoustics instrumentation at ASA conferences in 2000 and 2005.  Download curriculum vitae (PDF, 100 KB).