By Maggie Beamguard
Insider Editor
Two years ago, Andrew McPartland was launching a rocket into the Alabama sky as part of NASA’s University Student Launch Initiative.
Now the Seven Lakes resident is charting a course in a different direction: the ocean depths.
McPartland recently graduated from UNC Charlotte with a master of science in Mechanical Engineering. But his education is not complete.
McPartland has been awarded the competitive Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship through the U.S. Department of Defense. The scholarship program funds advanced STEM education in exchange for civilian service supporting national research and technology initiatives.
“It’s basically a full-ride scholarship,” McPartland said. “The Department of Defense will pay my full tuition to get a Ph.D in a STEM-related field.” His years of service will equal the years it takes for him to complete his degree.
Since its inception in 2006, the SMART Scholarship-for-Service Program has awarded more than 6,000 scholarships to students pursuing studies critical to national security and emerging technologies.
McPartland plans to begin work this fall on a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, most likely at Virginia Tech through the university’s Center for Marine Autonomy and Robotics.
This new plunge in his academic journey emerged out of research he conducted during graduate school, including a summer internship at the Naval Research Laboratory.
There, he worked with researchers in the acoustics division on autonomous underwater vehicles — robotic submarines capable of operating independently beneath the ocean surface.
“They’re a lot like submarines, just much smaller and nobody is inside,” McPartland explained.
Unlike airborne drones, underwater vehicles cannot rely on standard radio communication once submerged. That means the vehicles must make decisions independently using onboard computer systems and preprogrammed objectives.
“Once they go underwater, they’re completely reliant on their own computer to navigate and complete whatever mission was uploaded before the launch,” he said.
For the past two years, McPartland focused his graduate research on solving one of the challenges in the field of underwater exploration: determining the safest and most efficient times and locations for autonomous underwater vehicles to surface.
His thesis research developed mathematical algorithms that optimize surfacing decisions while accounting for nearby ships and other possible interference.
McPartland successfully defended his thesis in April and officially completed his master’s degree in May.
Though his recent work centers on marine technology, his path has not been entirely straight forward.
Marine science and the natural world has fascinated McPartland since childhood. As an undergraduate at UNC Charlotte he explored aerospace engineering, including building and testing a competition rocket for NASA.
“It was very cool and very interesting,” he said of the aerospace work. But the currents of graduate school pulled him back to his earlier fascination with the ocean.
“What initially drew me to aerospace were the unknowns of space,” McPartland said. “But as I grew to learn about these subjects, it became clear to me that we actually know less about our ocean than we do about our immediate area in space.” That realization now propels his work.
Below approximately 200 meters, sunlight disappears completely from the ocean. According to McPartland, scientists estimate that vast portions of the deep sea remain unexplored, in part because of the enormous technical challenges involved in operating underwater.
“The fact that we can’t see over 90 percent of the ocean is a huge problem for humans trying to look at things,” McPartland said.
He hopes advances in autonomous systems and artificial intelligence will eventually allow researchers to map, observe and better understand those inaccessible environments.
“My goal is to use these vehicles to research the ocean, specifically marine life, and to learn it’s mysteries and go places no one has ever gone before.”
The young engineer who once reached for the stars prepares to explore an equally mysterious frontier.
Before beginning his doctoral studies, McPartland plans to relax on the surface after years of deep diving research.
“This summer, I plan on just spending time with friends and doing some traveling,” he said. “Once I get started, the grind is not going to stop.”
Contact Maggie Beamguard at maggie@thepilot.com.
