Marine Engineering is the smallest of the four departments and the one with the most equipment. We work on two things: machines that operate underwater without supervision, and structures that have to stand on a shoreline that will not stay where it is.
What we work on
Autonomous underwater systems. Navigation, control and decision-making for vehicles that cannot be reached, cannot be positioned by satellite below the surface, and cannot be recovered quickly. The group's particular interest is in systems that carry an honest estimate of their own error and act on it — a vehicle that knows it is lost is a success, and a confidently wrong one is an expensive lesson.
Sensor integration. Making instruments from different manufacturers behave as a single payload. Unglamorous, and the difference between one usable dataset and four that cannot be aligned.
Coastal engineering. Protection designed for a moving shoreline rather than a static one, studied over decades rather than over a design storm. Including the uncomfortable finding that a structure which performs well in isolation usually moves the problem into someone else's jurisdiction.
The test basin
The Marine Robotics and Test Basin opened in 2026 after a four-year argument that the department was teaching vehicle design to students who had never watched one fail. Thirty meters long, five deep at one end, with a wave maker and a movable false floor.
It is used every week during spring term for undergraduate teaching, and by graduate research outside teaching hours. The student competition team builds up to its trials there, which is how a first-year project ends up in the water next to a doctoral one.
Teaching
The undergraduate degree is engineering first and marine second: statics, fluids and control before anything gets wet. Students build and test a vehicle before they graduate, and most of them break one first.
Working with us
We supervise master's students in ocean engineering. Anyone operating equipment in the basin needs the safety briefing and a second person present.