Charles R. Greene, Jr.
Founder, President Emeritus
• Ph.D.: University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA (Electrical Engineering), 1978
• B.S., M.S.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (Electrical Engineering), 1957
Charles R. Greene Jr. Ph.D., has worked on underwater acoustics research and engineering since 1959. Much of his earlier work was supported by the U.S. Navy and involved underwater noise and acoustic transmission loss experiments in the Arctic Ocean. Since 1980, he has worked with biologists studying the behavior of whales and fish exposed to industrial noise. In 1983 he founded Greeneridge Sciences to continue bioacoustics work. In 1995 he completed a project for the U.S. Minerals Management Service involving four field seasons at Barrow, Alaska, studying the influence of industrial sounds on migrating arctic whales in springtime. During that project and also during an earlier (1980-84) project for MMS, he provided and operated underwater sound sources that could be used to test the responses of bowhead whales. For four years beginning in 1996 he measured and described the pulsed sounds of airgun arrays operated in the Beaufort Sea during seismic surveys for hydrocarbon deposits. In support of this effort, he has developed and used autonomous seafloor recorders to store sound data for up to three weeks continuously during seismic surveys and bowhead whale migration. He is currently responsible for measuring the industrial sounds in air and underwater associated with the Northstar Development offshore near Prudhoe Bay and for monitoring acoustically the locations of calling bowhead whales passing Northstar during their fall migration. Dr. Greene is the author of three chapters on physical acoustics in the book Marine Mammals and Noise published by Academic Press in 1995. He is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and serves on their Medals and Awards Committee. He is a member of NOAA Fisheries' panel of experts on noise standards for marine mammal exposure. Download curriculum vitae (PDF, 142 KB).Katherine H. Kim
President, Senior Research Scientist
• Ph.D.: Scripps Institution of Oceanography & Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of California, San Diego, CA (Electrical Engineering, Applied Ocean Sciences), 2002
• M.S.: University of California, San Diego, CA (Electrical Engineering, Electronic Circuits & Systems), 1993
• B.S.: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL (Physics), 1991
Dr. Katherine Kim specialized in research problems in underwater acoustics and signal processing as a graduate student and postdoctoral researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and then as a senior scientist at HLS Research, La Jolla, California. Her background includes work in adaptive and robust signal processing methods for detection and localization of ocean acoustic signals, covariance estimation and source motion effects on adaptive array processing and matched field processing, investigations into acoustic pressure sensitivities to uncertainties in 3-D sound speed fields, ocean reverberation modeling, underwater acoustic communications, and ocean engineering. Dr. Kim has extensive sea-going experience and holds advanced SCUBA and coastal cruising certifications. Her current research areas involve the passive acoustic monitoring of marine mammals and the acoustic propagation associated with their vocalizations, ranging from a variety of dolphin in the Pacific Ocean to sperm whales in the Gulf of Mexico to bowhead whales in the Arctic Ocean. Since joining Greeneridge in June 2008, Dr. Kim has collected acoustic data around the world to model and measure the sounds of marine life and anthropogenic noise. She is a member of the Acoustical Society of America, IEEE, and the Society of Marine Mammalogy. Download curriculum vitae (PDF, 160 KB).
Susanna B. Blackwell
Senior Scientist
• Ph.D.: University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA (Biology), 1996
• Licence ès Sciences: Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland (Biology), 1988
Dr. Blackwell has been working with large marine vertebrates for over 25 years—northern and southern elephant seals, Baltic grey seals, albacore tuna, Atlantic and Pacific bluefin tuna, bowhead whales, and narwhals, to name a few. In the early stages of her career she was involved in the design and manufacture of several types of seal data loggers, recording parameters such as depth, temperature, heart rate, swim speed, activity levels, and bioluminescence. She joined Greeneridge in May 2000 and has since collected and analyzed acoustic data on man-made sounds, such as those produced by impact and vibratory pile-driving, airgun pulses, and numerous construction activities, to assess their range and impact on marine vertebrates, mostly marine mammals. More recently she has combined these two interests—in collecting data using tags and in assessing the effects of man-made sounds on marine animals—to examine how East Greenland narwhals react to sounds from airgun pulses, which are used the world over in seismic exploration for oil and gas. She is the first author of twelve refereed journal articles and a co-author in 35 others. She is a member and Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, the Society for Marine Mammalogy, and Sigma Xi (National Society for Scientific Research). Download curriculum vitae (PDF, 49 KB).
Alexander S. Conrad
Ocean Engineer
• International MBA: ESIC Business & Marketing School, Madrid, Spain, 2011
• M.S.: Florida Atlantic University, Dania Beach, FL (Ocean Engineering, Acoustics), 2010
• B.S.: Northeastern University, Boston, MA (Physics), 2007
Alexander Conrad began working for Greeneridge Sciences Inc. deploying acoustic recorders to hear bowhead whale calls in the Alaskan Arctic in the summer of 2011. He collects and analyzes underwater acoustic data to assess human effects on marine life. Most of his fieldwork has been inside the Arctic Circle, in areas such as Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and Baffin Island, Canada. Alex’s analysis efforts have ranged from using direct measurements and assessments of vessel noise, to writing programs used by manual analysts for identifying belugas and other whales. He has written code to detect and measure Greenland narwhal clicks and has modeled underwater acoustic propagation on the New Jersey shelf. Alex’s pre-Greeneridge seagoing experience entails sailing aboard several tall ships both as deck crew and engineer, as well as measuring currents in the Caribbean Sea aboard the SSV Corwith Cramer. His various other previous research subjects have included fire effects monitoring for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, electromagnetic wave propagation, and geophysics. Download curriculum vitae (PDF, 90 KB).