Professor Nicholas Makris
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Director of the Laboratory for Undersea Remote Sensing

 

Research:

Ocean exploration, undersea remote sensing of marine life and geophysical phenomena, census of marine life, ocean acoustic hurricane classification, Europa ice sheet fracture mechanics and seismics, wave propagation and scattering theory in remote sensing through random media and waveguides, statistical estimation and information theory in sensing, linear and nonlinear acoustics and seismics.
 
Current Graduate Students: Tianrun Chen, Deanelle Symonds, Ioannis Bertsatos, Srinivasan Jagannathan, Hadi Tavakoli Nia
Teaching: 2.065, 2.066 Acoustic Sensing
2.06J Mechanical Vibration
13.851 Fundamentals and Applications of Underwater Sound
13.015J Mechanical Systems, Signal Processing, and Stochastics
13.A15 Acoustical Oceanography
Education: PhD in Ocean Engineering, MIT 1991,
SB in Physics, MIT 1983.

Honors and Awards:

Selected Journal Papers:

(** indicates papers with Makris’ students)

  1. ** N.C. Makris, P. Ratilal, D. Symonds, S. Jagannathan, S. Lee, R. Nero, “Fish population and behavior revealed by instantaneous continental-shelf-scale imaging,” Science, Volume 311, 660-663 (February 3, 2006). (This link includes Movies.)
  2. **J. D. Wilson and N.C. Makris, “Ocean Acoustic Hurricane Classification,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 119, 168-181 (2006).
  3. **S. Lee and N.C. Makris, “The array invariant,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 119, 336-351 (2006).
  4. **P. Ratilal and N.C. Makris, “Mean and covariance of the forward field propagated through a stratified ocean waveguide with three-dimensional inhomogeneities,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 118, 3560-3574 (2005).
  5. **T.R. Chen, P. Ratilal and N.C. Makris, “Mean and variance of the forward field propagated through three-dimensional random internal waves in a continental-shelf waveguide,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 118, 3532-3559 (2005).
  6. **S. Lee, B. Pappalardo, N.C. Makris, “Mechanics of tidally induced fractures in Europa's ice shell,” Icarus 177, 367-379 (2005).
  7. **Ratilal et al and N.C. Makris, “Long range remote imaging of the continental shelf environment: The Acoustic Clutter Reconnaissance Experiment 2001 Experiment,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117, 1977-1998 (2005).
  8. **M. Zanolin, I. Ingram, A. Thode, N. C. Makris, “Asymptotic accuracy of geoacoustic inversions” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 116, 2031-2042 (2004)
  9. **S. Lee, M. Zanolin, A. Thode, R. Pappalardo, N.C. Makris, “Probing Europa’s Interior with Natural Sound Sources,” Icarus 165, 144-167 (2003)
  10. **Yisan Lai and N. C. Makris, “Spectral and modal formulations for the Doppler-shifted field scattered from an object moving in a stratified medium,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 113, 223-244 (2003).
  11. **A. Thode, E. Naftali, I. Ingram, P. Ratilal and N. C. Makris, “Necessary conditions for a maximum likelihood estimate to become asymptotically unbiased and attain the Cramer-Rao lower bound Part II: Range and depth localization of a sound source in an ocean waveguide,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 112, 1890-1910 (2002).
  12. **P. Ratilal, Y. Lai and N. C. Makris, “Validity of the sonar equation and Babinet’s principle for scattering in a stratified medium,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 112, 1797-1816 (2002).
  13. **P. Ratilal and N. C. Makris, “Extinction theorem for object scattering in a stratified medium,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 110, 2924-2945 (2001).
  14. **E. Naftali and N. C. Makris, “Necessary conditions for a maximum likelihood estimate to become asymptotically unbiased and attain the Cramer-Rao lower bound, Part I: General approach with an application to time-delay and Doppler shift estimation,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.110, 1917-1930 (2001).
  15. M. Betke and N. C. Makris, “Recognition, resolution and complexity of objects subject to affine transformation,” International Journal of Computer Vision 44, 5-40 (2001).
  16. **N. C. Makris and P. Ratilal, “A unified model for reverberation and submerged object scattering in a stratified ocean waveguide,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 109, 909-941 (2001).
  17. **C. S. Chia, L., N. C. Makris and T. Fialkowski, “A comparison of bi-static scattering from two geologically distinct abyssal hills,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 108, 2053-2070 (2000)
  18. **N. C. Makris, C. S. Chia, L. T. Fialkowski, “The bi-azimuthal scattering distribution of an abyssal hill,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 106, 2491-2512 (1999)
  19. N. C. Makris, “A spectral approach to 3-D object scattering in stratified media applied to scattering from submerged spheres,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 104, 2105-2113 (1998).
  20. N. C. Makris, “The effect of saturated transmission scintillation on ocean-acoustic intensity measurements,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 100, 769-783 (1996).
  21. N. C. Makris, “Parameter resolution bounds that depend on sample size,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 99, 2851-2861 (1996).
  22. N. C. Makris, “A foundation for logarithmic measures of fluctuating intensity in pattern recognition,” Optics Letters 20, 2012-2014 (1995).
  23. N. C. Makris, L. Avelino, R. Menis, “Deterministic reverberation from ocean ridges,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 97, 3547-3574 (1995). (Also appears in full in a special volume commemorating ONR's 50th Anniversary.)
  24. N. C. Makris, F. Ingenito and W. A. Kuperman, “Detection of a submerged object insonified by surface noise in an ocean waveguide,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 96, 1703-1724 (1994).
  25. M. D. Collins, N. C. Makris and L. T. Fialkowski, “Noise-cancellation and source localization,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 96, 1773-1776 (1994).
  26. N. C. Makris and J. M. Berkson, “Long-range backscatter from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 95, 1865-1881 (1994).
  27. N. C. Makris, “Imaging ocean-basin reverberation via inversion,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 94, 983-993 (1993).
  28. M. D. Collins, J. M. Berkson, W. A. Kuperman, N. C. Makris, and J. S. Perkins, “Applications of optimal time-domain beamforming,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 93, 1851-1865 (1993).
  29. N. C. Makris and I. Dyer, “Environmental correlates of arctic ice edge noise,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 90, 3288-3298 (1990).
  30. N. C. Makris and I. Dyer, “Environmental correlates of pack ice noise,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 79, 1434-1440 (1986).

Selected Refereed Conference Papers:

  1. M. Betke, E. Naftali and N. C. Makris, "Necessary Conditions to Attain Performance Bounds on Structure and Motion Estimates of Rigid Objects," Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference CVPR 2001, Kauai, Hawaii, December 2001.
  2. M. Betke and N. Makris, "Information-Conserving Object Recognition." Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Computer Vision, pp. 145-152, Bombay, India, January 1998. Also, UMD-CfAR-TR-858.
  3. N. C. Makris,"The Statistics of Ocean-Acoustic Ambient Noise," in Sea Surface Sound '97, edited by T. Leighton, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (1997).
  4. N. C. Makris, "Estimating surface orientation from sonar images," in High Frequency Acoustics in Shallow Water, edited by N.G. Pace, Kluwer, Dordrecht (1997).
  5. N. C. Makris, "Statistical ocean-acoustics in shallow water," Proceedings of the First International Conference on Shallow Water Acoustics, Beijing China ( 1997).
  6. N. C. Makris, "A foundation for logarithmic measures of fluctuating intensity in ocean-acoustics," A.B. Wood Memorial Lecture, Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics 15, Nottingham, UK (1996).
  7. M. Betke and N. C. Makris, "Fast Object Recognition in Noisy Images Using Simulated Annealing." Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Computer Vision, pp. 523-530, June 1995 Also, MIT-AI-Memo-1510.

Nicholas C. Makris, Professor
Center for Ocean Engineering
Mechanics
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 5-212
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Email: makris"at symbol"mit.edu
URL: http://acoustics.mit.edu/faculty/makris/makris.html
Phone: 617-258-6104
Fax: 617-253-2350
Last updated: July 19, 2007