September 1997
Prof Tracks Harbor Pollutants With Fiber Optic Grant Sometime next year, a small, computer-controlled, submersible vehicle known as a "fish" will be loaded with fiber optic cables and other sensors and equipment, and lowered into Boston Harbor. As it undulates its way through the water, it will relay three-dimensional data about the various organic materials it encounters directly to the computers of Prof. Robert Chen and his fellow researchers from the Environmental, Coastal and Ocean Sciences program (ECOS).
Surveys of dissolved organic matter, including some serious pollutants, in Boston Harbor and at three other sites&endash;Chesapeake Bay, San Diego Bay, and San Francisco Bay&endash;will provide information to help scientists sort out the kinds of pollution they are finding, their sources, and their fate once they are in the water.
Chen will use the fiber-optic sensors to measure the fluorescent components of organic materials found in sewage effluents and soil and urban runoff. Various natural organic matter and contaminants can be identified by their fluorescent "signatures."
"The advantage of using fiber-optic technology is that we get the information immediately, and on site," says Chen, thus eliminating the need to bring samples back to a laboratory on dry land for analysis. This "real-time" aspect of the data is important because of the transient nature of organic materials as they make their way into these waters and then are disbursed by currents and tides.
Chen's research has won him a coveted Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigators Program grant in the amount of $300,000, plus $139,000 for equipment. Only 28 of the 300 proposals submitted to the Young Investigators Program were funded this year. Chen has been the recipient of several other grants for his work in this area. His co-researchers in this project are research associates Bernie Gardner and Xuchen Wang and doctoral candidate Steve Rudnick, all of the ECOS program.