May 22, 2013
News Digest: Seaglider technology licensed, lecture revisits the Boldt decision, U. of Minnesota president to speak
Seaglider licensed to Kongsberg
Kongsberg Underwater Technology of Lynwood, Wash., has acquired the commercial license to produce, market and further develop the technology behind the Seaglider, a UW-developed underwater vehicle that can travel across ocean basins collecting ocean measurements. The agreement was announced this month by Kongsberg and the UW Center for Commercialization.
Seaglider was developed in 1997 by researchers at the School of Oceanography and Applied Physics Laboratory. In UW research the device has set records for the distance traveled and time spent alone at sea, using buoyancy to glide up and down through the ocean while using minimal power.
Kongsberg will pick up where previous licensee iRobot left off, handling orders for customers external to the UW. The Norwegian-owned company plans to hire five or six new employees to build Seagliders at its Lynwood facility. The UW Seaglider Fabrication Center, managed by Fritz Stahr, will continue to employ three full-time staff members and two students to build and service Seagliders for UW researchers, and to service units sold before there was a commercial provider for the technology.
The Boldt decision revisited
Richard R. Whitney, a UW emeritus professor of fisheries, will give a public talk about his role in the Boldt decision, a 1974 ruling that gave Washington tribes an equal share of the state’s salmon catch. The talk is at 4 p.m. Thursday, May 23, in Fishery Sciences 102, and is free and open to the public.
Richard Whitney
Whitney’s talk, “My Fisheries Management Experience with Judge George H. Boldt in his Case United States v. The State of Washington,” will provide a firsthand account of the science and politics of those years. Whitney served as technical adviser to Judge Boldt from March 1974, one month after he handed down the ruling, until 1979, when the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed and affirmed the decision.
Whitney was a UW fisheries professor from 1983 to 1993. He previously held positions at the University of Maryland, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the predecessor to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He is co-author of “Inland Fishes of Washington” and was elected in 2008 to the American Fisheries Society’s Fisheries Management Hall of Excellence.
U. of Minnesota president to speak
Eric Kaler, University of Minnesota president and former UW professor of chemical engineering, will speak on campus Tuesday, May 28, about challenges and opportunities for the nation’s top research universities.
Eric Kaler
Kaler taught at UW for seven years starting in 1982 before moving on to the University of Delaware and later to Stony Brook University in New York. He has been president at Minnesota since 2011.
He will speak to a general audience on “The Future of the American Research University” at 3 p.m. May 28 in the Lyceum of the Husky Union Building for the chemical engineering department’s first Bruce A. Finlayson Lecture. The lecture, the department’s largest event of the year, honors Finlayson, a chemical engineering professor emeritus who previously taught with Kaler. In a separate talk, Kaler will have a more technical presentation on surfactant microstructures at 10:30 a.m. May 28 in the Bill & Melinda Gates Commons (CSE 691) of the Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering.
Both talks are free and open to the public. A reception will follow the afternoon talk at 4 p.m. in the HUB Lyceum.
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