My Thesis: I've submitted my PhD thesis! Titled "Three Dimensional Modelling of Coral Reefs for Structural Complexity Analysis," the thesis examines the correlation between reef structural complexity and ecosystem health. 

For my thesis, I developed a new technique for creating and analyzing 3D models of underwater scenes using computer vision and machine learning. The methods are already being used by researchers in Indonesia, Madagascar, Bonaire, Cuba, Honduras, and the Maldives. I've published part of the research, and have five related publications nearing submission or under review. I hope the research will make a significant impact in our understanding of the ocean.

Ocean and Space Collaboration: I postponed submitting my thesis by two months to work in a NASA artificial intelligence accelerator last summer in California (blog post here). It was a chance to apply my knowledge of 3D modeling underwater ocean scenes to the challenge of 3D modelling near-earth asteroids. It was a fantastic opportunity that not only augmented the last chapter of my PhD thesis, but also allowed me to grow personally and professionally.

​Our team of four engineers at NASA's Frontier Development Lab used a range of machine learning techniques to automate asteroid 3D modelling. My team's results were well-received by NASA's Planetary Defense community and the tool my team developed will be implemented this year at the Arecibo Observatory to help track near-earth asteroids.

Upcoming Events: While waiting for my PhD defense in March or April, I've committed to a few speaking events, listed below.  

CERN alumna turned deep-sea explorer ​
​
S: What do you think ocean researchers and particle physicists can learn from each other?
GY: I think we already know it: That is, we can only solve big problems by working together. I'm convinced that only by working together across disciplines, ethnicities and nationalities can we survive as a species. Of course, the physical sciences are integral to everything related to ocean engineering, but it's really CERN's problem-solving methodology that's most inspiring and applicable. CERN was created to solve big problems by combining the best of human learning irrespective of nationality, ethnicity or discipline. Our Pisces VI deep sea submarine team is multidisciplinary, multinational and—just like CERN—it's focused on exploring the unknown that's essential to life as we know it.

​Last week I was delighted to return to CERN for a short trip (and break from thesis writing). In front of the Globe, CERN's alumni team and I filmed an interview for CERN's newly launched alumni network. I'll post the video once it's live. Rachel Bray and I chatted about my time there, including my first visit as an INTEL Science Fair winner followed by an internship in CERN openlab, and then my transition from physics into ocean engineering (how it's not such a weird transition!). We also gave a plug for my talk in February at CERN's first-ever alumni conference, where I'll tackle the subject, ‘What is the role of scientists in building a sustainable future for the planet?’ Spoiler alert: I'll focus on the big questions a CERN-for-the-ocean could answer! (My 2014 op-ed for TIME explains more fully my vision for a  CERN-for-the-ocean.)

My first-ever blog titled, "CERN-Intel 2010 Special Award Winners' Trip," chronicles my first visit to CERN as a thrilled 17-year old physics student living her dream of a one-week immersion at CERN. It covers every detail of the trip, from notes on each speakers and activities to what we ate for breakfast.  

I'm thankful for CERN's supportive community, its dedication to pushing the boundaries of human knowledge, and its pioneering model that has demonstrated how cooperative, interdisciplinary, multinational pulbic-private research can succeed in solving big problems and achieving monumental results (e.g., invention of World Wide Web and Grid Computing, confirmation of Higgs boson, are just a few examples). In fact, the night before my interview I met another alumna who wrote the first code for CERNdocs that became a central node in the "vague but exciting" project now known as the World Wide Web. 

In my interview, rather than focus on specific problems and solutions, I tried to highlight open-ended research questions---the type of large-scale questions CERN has so well addressed. I was thinking, 'What is the equivalent for the ocean of confirming the Higgs boson?' For me there are two big, unanswered questions:  (1) How does the ocean support so much biodiversity? (Also: Why does it? What are all those unique creatures and their purposes anyways? (2) How does it regulate weather/atmosphere on our planet? Our window of opportunity for answering these questions is closing, as we are losing biodiversity and the ocean is increasingly unable to provide the ecosystem functions we depend upon; but again, it's possible to focus on the big, exciting questions without harping on the doom and gloom.

Notes/text from my interview are below. 

Tell us who you are.  I'm an ocean engineer, just now completing my doctorate at University of Oxford. I work on technologies that help us better understand our ocean. 

What have you done since CERN? This summer I joined 23 other scientists from around the world for an artificial intelligence accelerator at NASA’s Frontier Development Lab in California. It reminded me a lot of CERN – on a much smaller scale. It was a public-private, interdisciplinary initiative that brought together scientists from different backgrounds to focus on solving discreet problems in a short period of time. My team focused on using artificial intelligence to create 3D models of asteroids. ​

While in Geneva, I stumbled across this well-written, cautiously optimistic piece by Carl Safina ​for National Geographic about how the waters off of New York are changing for the better. I found it inspiring, and it made me extra-excited to attend the opening of NatGeo's Ocean Odyssey next month! More about that on the Act Now page!   

From Safina's article: 

During the Festival, Fabien Cousteau’s Mission 31 got a shout-out not just in my talk, but also in educator Joe Grabowski’s talk. Joe founded Exploring by the Seat of Your Pants (EBTSOYP), an awesome program that connects classrooms with explorers for virtual field trips. If your classroom is studying the ocean, EBTSOYP can connect your class for 30+ minutes with someone or a team doing ocean work that as their full-time job(s). I believe exposing young students to human stories related to their studies is essential to engagement. I remember in middle school wanting to be a dolphin trainer, orthodontist, or teacher because those were the professions that I understood---I never heard of an ocean engineer until university! I can’t wait to connect students with the Pisces VI submarine project through Joe’s program.

Yesterday (Monday June 26, 2017) was the first day of my 8-week stint with NASA’s Frontier Development Lab. In September I’ll return full attention to my doctoral thesis, which I plan to submit in December. In my spare time I’m thinking about the science addenda for the Pisces VI submarine, which I’ll visit this August with fellow scientist Anni Djurhuus. Scott is currently on a cruise with the Alvin submarine in Costa Rica.
 
At the Festival, I learned and experienced the word “overinspired.” I feel extremely motivated to get back to work, even if that means getting back to the grind. I’m looking forward to learning cutting edge machine learning applications this summer with NASA colleagues and will devote my whole focus to that. Down the line, I look forward to collaborations with fellow explorers, whether that be on ocean research expeditions, technology development, or yet unplanned adventures. ​

hTIMTalk Grace C. Young
Theme: Collaboration and Engineering
Title: No Engineer is an Island 
 
You know the movie Iron Man? The rock-star engineer of the film creates an incredible machine, alone, while squirreled away in a glorified basement. Not to dis superheroes or Marvel fans, but that really is fiction. I don't know anyone who works like that... and I go to MIT.
 
At MIT I’ve found engineering to be extremely collaborative. On a daily basis, engineers work together to solve complex problems all over the world. We may be "nerds" that have our own quirks, but in order to do our jobs right, we need to be people persons too - constantly interacting with others. We shouldn’t be ashamed of working in groups, of not accomplishing things purely on our own, and then having a "team," rather than an individual, be recognized. This is an important idea to get into people's heads, especially engineers.
 
DaVincis or Edisons may come along once every 500 years or so. But as a rule, successful engineering requires teamwork.
 
Once I met a girl at a Christmas party and someone asked her if she wanted to be an engineer "like Grace" when she grew up. She said “no,” because she "liked working with people.”
 
I wish I could convey this to her that as an engineer, you do work with people! A lot of people! Really, everyday; it’s necessary. She thought a “people career” was being a doctor or working at a store. Too many people think this way, that engineers are somehow anti-social, working alone in basements.  It’s an unfortunate misconception because it inhibits some, especially women, from entering, or trying, engineering because they want to “work with people.”
 
Honestly, part of me was that girl at the Christmas party when I first got to MIT. I remember as a freshman, reading a problem set question and having no idea how to solve it, yet I thought if I really focused and put a ton of hours into it I could do it; but I wasn’t successful. Then, I remember staying up late working on problem sets with classmates. A group of us would sit down and, working together for several hours, we’d somehow manage to find a solution, even though each of us on our own couldn’t figure out how to solve the problem earlier.
  
I remember hearing about a guy in our physics class who did the whole PSET we were struggling over in just two hours by himself. I was so jealous! I thought, “I want to be that guy.” But I realize now that I was missing the point. Collaboration is necessary to solve real problems. I’m grateful that MIT has taught me that lesson.
 
I discovered then that to succeed at MIT you really need both introverted and extroverted qualities. There are times when it’s better to sit on your own, straighten things out in your own head, do practice problems, or just teach yourself a new skill. But you also need to know when to work with others to find solutions.
 
This summer I used that working style on a real project. I was working in Hawaii to re-design an autonomous robot for monitoring the health of commercial fisheries. Building the robot was a perfect project for an ocean engineering student, like me. Here I am on deck of a research vessel with the robot I worked on [referring to photo]. 
 
Sure, for this project I spent some time alone at my desk, making a SolidWorks 3D model and reading relevant papers, but a huge amount of my time I spent soliciting input and communicating with others; so I really had to be a people-person, too. I’d be on the phone with a machinist, for example, almost daily, about what parts to change to make manufacturing faster. Or, I’d be talking to the crew who deployed an earlier version of the robot, seeing how I could change the design to make their lives easier. They said if the units could stack on top of one another, like Ikea boxes, it would make their work more efficient. I incorporated their feedback by adding simple pegs in the corners that allowed units to stack.
 
I wouldn’t have known these things, about the machining or stacking, without reaching out to those people. So collaboration and communication was a huge part of the project, and quite frankly one of the challenges.
 
This dynamic working style - I’m calling it the mix of intro and extroverted – comes into play in many areas of like, not just on engineering projects like building robots or solving problems sets.
 
I first practiced it in ballet class.
 
This is me four years ago [refering to photo]. Before MIT I danced with a ballet company. In high school I spent just as much time in the ballet studio as I did doing math problems and working in my school’s robotics lab.
 
When you’re training at the ballet barre it’s easy to stand there and be jealous of the dancers around you. Maybe they have a higher développé, or longer legs, and so on… But at some point for you to get better, you need to put blinders on, and focus on your own improvements. You need to let yourself be inspired and motivated by the people around you, but also know when to focus on your own development.
 
I’ve had to do the same thing at MIT; it’s easy to be jealous of the guy who finishes the 6.01 PSET in an hour, or started in advanced physics freshman fall. But that’s not always productive. To succeed here you need to let yourself be inspired and motivated by your peers, and work with them to solve problems, and then know when to focus on your own learning.
 
I hope the girl at the Christmas party, and other people stuck in her mindset, will soon consider engineering a career that lets you “work with people,” that the Iron Man-working style is a myth. 

Read the full story in The Kansas City Star. We made front-page! ​
​Here are a few more updates from Instagram: 

My officemate and a fellow researcher in Oxford's Ocean Research & Conservation Group, Dr Michelle Taylor, has found the first evidence of microplastic being ingested by deep sea animals. Read her paper at: 

This Thursday (Oct 6) I'll be speaking at Kings College London about ocean exploration. Everyone is welcome. At 6pm in the Pyramid Room, the talk part of their Intrepid Explorers series and will most likely precede some sort of pub outing. Thanks Rebecca Farnum, author of Defending the Deep - Guardians of the Sea (!), for inviting me! 

Which do you care about more, the earth or the ocean?

Yesterday Dominic Andradi-Brown and I presented at the annual dinner of the Oxford University Underwater Exploration Group (OUUEG). We talked broadly about using technology to explore coral reefs, and gave examples from our work together on rebreathers in the Caribbean and Red Sea. We also talked about our separate expeditions, including Dom's in Indonesia with Operation Wallacea and mine in the Keys with Mission 31 and in Hawaii with NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center. 

The 2016 International Business Ethics Competition was last week in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I competed with a team from Oxford. Our presentation, "The Future of SeaWorld," earned us the top prize in our division.
​
Professional videos and photos of presentations will be available shortly. Meanwhile, here is a copy of our PowerPoint and a brief summary of our vision for the parks is below. ​

Jan 14, 2015  I'm sitting on the bus to London working on my 10 min talk for TEDx Oxford this Sunday. Excited! I'll post the video once it's out. The focus is "Why we know more about the dark side of the moon than the depths of the ocean." I'll present the argument from my BSc. thesis,  which distills the reasons down to missiles and miscommunication. Then, after understanding the history, we'll look at future of ocean exploration as a venture jointly funded by private and government sectors. I'll tie in stories from expeditions too. Everyone loves stories. 

PS ... in London for talk by Richard Pyle, big time rebreather diver and mesophotic coral reef researcher. His videos are really cool. Just listen to him:  "Our average rate of species discovery is 12 new species per hour we spend at depth." (!!) 

I'm speaking again at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics on Monday 2nd November at 8pm. It will be an informal talk/discussion over wine and vegan snacks. 

If you'd like to attend, shoot me a message!

Are they reefs or hazards? When industry can leave equipment in the ocean
Presentation by Grace Young
Monday 2nd November 2015 8pm

... read full piece at TIME.com/4029379/cern-for-the-oceans/

Apparently it was talked about in Harvard's Environmental Science class this week!

Fri, Sep 25, 2:00 PM - 2:30 PM LONDON TIME
Created by Exploring By The Seat Of Your Pants
Public Event
Free
 
Join Grace as she shares about what it was like to spend 14 days living and working in a laboratory 63 feet below the surface of the ocean! Grace will also talk about ocean engineering and robotics.

Grace just returned from exploring mesophotic coral reefs off the Honduran island of Utila. After earning her BSc in mechanical and ocean engineering at MIT, she’s currently a Marshall Scholar and PhD candidate with Oxford University’s Ocean Research & Conservation Group.

An avid sailor and diver, she’s participated in five marine expeditions on four continents this year, and is currently using new rebreather technology to dive deeper and longer. Her work experience includes helping to design, build, and text submersible and aerial robots that have deployed in the Arctic, Antarctic, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, to monitor endangered species and create 3D maps of ice shelves and coral reefs to measure effects warming and acidification.

Last year, she was an aquanaut on Fabien Cousteau’s Mission 31, living and working on the ocean floor for two weeks in the Aquarius underwater lab

This lesson is suggested for grades 4 and up.

https://plus.google.com/events/c7m204avp4hhd3mm2ei37ajkr4o?hl=en

Thanks Sport Diver magazine for the profile in April's issue! Also thanks to Teen Vogue for the profile earlier this spring. I'm grateful for the opportunity to spread the word about the urgent need for better ocean management and exciting new frontiers in ocean exploration.