Nicholas C. Makris

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

Director of the Center for Ocean Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering


Prof. Makris' Department of Mechanical Engineering webpage

 

 

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, musical
instrument acoustics and evolution.
  • Bose Research Fellowship to Study Early Musical Instruments

Violin Program at the North Bennett Street School
Violin Program at the North Bennet Street School, Makris far right, Roman Barnas second from right.

 

 

  • Future of New England Fisheries

Sen. Kerry and Prof. Makris images
Senator Kerry, Prof. Makris, Prof. Ratilal and other State and Regional officials dicussing the use of OAWRS for the future of New England fisheries imagesSenator Kerry, Prof. Makris, Prof. Ratilal and other State and Regional officials dicussing the use of OAWRS for the future of New England fisheries images
Senator Kerry, Prof. Makris, Prof. Ratilal and other State and Regional officials dicussing the use of OAWRS for the future of New England fisheries.

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sen. Kerry and Prof. Ratilal imagesSenator Kerry, Prof. Makris, Prof. Ratilal and other State and Regional officials dicussing the use of OAWRS for the future of New England fisheries imagesSenator Kerry, Prof. Makris, Prof. Ratilal and other State and Regional officials dicussing the use of OAWRS for the future of New England fisheries images

 

Current Graduate Students:

Postdoctoral Associate:

Daniel Duane, Arun Krishnadas, Shourav Pednekar, Eleftherios Kaklamanis, Felix Piavsky

 

Teaching: 2.065, 2.066 Acoustic Sensing
2.007 Design and Manufacturing I
2.003 Dynamics and Control I
2.001 Mechanics and Materials
2.671 Measurement & Instrumentation
2.03 Dynamics I
2.031 Dynamics II
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.
Previous Employment: Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, 1991-1997

Honors and Awards:

Selected Journal Papers:

(** indicates papers with Makris’ students)

  1. Cho, B., Makris, N.C. "Predicting the Effects of Random Ocean Dynamic Processes on Underwater Acoustic Sensing and Communication." Sci Rep10, 4525 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61043-w
  2. Daniel Duane, Byunggu Cho , Ankita D. Jain, Olav Rune Godø and Nicholas C. Makris , "The Effect of Attenuation from Fish Shoals on Long-Range, Wide-Area Acoustic Sensing in the Ocean," Remote Sens. 2019, 11(21), 2464; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11212464
  3. Makris NC, Godø OR, Yi DH, et al. "Instantaneous areal population density of entire Atlantic cod and herring spawning groups and group size distribution relative to total spawning population." Fish Fish. 2019;20: 201–213. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12331 Supporting Information: faf12331-sup-0001-Supinfo.pdf
  4. Heriberto A Garcia, Chenyang Zhu, Matthew E Schinault, Anna I Kaplan, Nils Olav Handegard, Olav Rune Godø, Heidi Ahonen, Nicholas C Makris, Delin Wang, Wei Huang, Purnima Ratilal, "Temporal– spatial, spectral, and source level distributions of fin whale vocalizations in the Norwegian Sea observed with a coherent hydrophone array" ICES Journal of Marine Science, fsy127, https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsy127 2018
  5. D. H. Yi, Z. Gong, J. M. Jech, P. Ratilal, and N. C. Makris, "Instantaneous 3D Continental-Shelf Scale Imaging of Oceanic Fish by Multi-Spectral Resonance Sensing Reveals Group Behavior during Spawning Migration," Remote Sens. 2018, 10(1), 108; doi:10.3390/rs10010108
  6. **Wenjun Zhang, Yuming Liu, Purnima Ratilal, Byung-gu Cho, and Nicholas C. Makris, "Active Nonlinear Acoustic Sensing of an Object with Sum or Difference Frequency Fields", Remote Sens. 2017, 9, 954; doi:10.3390/rs9090954.
  7. D. Wang, H.Garcia, W. Huang, D.D. Tran, A.D. Jain, D. H. Yi, Z. Gong, J. M. Jech, O. R. Godø, N. C. Makris, & P. Ratilal, "Vast assembly of vocal marine mammals from diverse species on fish spawning ground", Nature, doi:10.1038/nature16960, 02 March 2016.
  8. **Ankita D. Jain and Nicholas C. Makris, “Maximum Likelihood Deconvolution of Beamformed Images with Signal-Dependent Speckle Fluctuations from Gaussian Random Fields: With Application to Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing (OAWRS),”Remote Sens. 2016, 8(9), 694 (2016);
  9. **Dong Hoon Yi and Nicholas C. Makris,"Feasibility of Acoustic Remote Sensing of Large Herring Shoals and Seafloor by Baleen WhalesRemote Sens. 2016, 8(9), 693 (2016)
  10. **Z. Gong, P. Ratilal, N.C. Makris, "Simultaneous localization of muliple broadbandnon-impulsive acoustic sources in an ocean waveguide using the array invariant." J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 138(5):2649-2667 (2015).
  11. **H. T. Nia, A. D. Jain, Y. Liu, M-R Alam, R. Barnas, and N. C. Makris, "The evolution of air resonance power efficiency in the violin and its ancestors," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 471(2175):20140905, DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2014.0905, (2015).
  12. Z. Gong, A. D. Jain, D. D. Tran, D. H. Yi, F. Wu, A. Zorn, P. Ratilal, and N. C. Makris, “Ecosystem scale acoustic sensing reveals humpback whale behavior synchronous with herring spawning processes and re-evaluation finds sonar had no effect on humpback song occurrence in the Gulf of Maine in Fall 2006,” PLoS ONE, 9(10): e104733. Doi:10.137/journal.pone.0104733, (2014).
  13. D. D. Tran, W. Huang, A. Bohn, D. Wang, Z. Gong, N. C. Makris, and P. Ratilal, “Using a coherent hydrophone array for observing sperm whale range, classification, and shallow-water dive profiles,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 135, 3352-3363, (2014).
  14. **A. Jain, A. Ignisca, D.H. Yi, P. Ratilal, N. C. Makris, “Feasibility of Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing (OAWRS) of Atlantic Cod with Seafloor Scattering Limitations,” Remote Sensing 6, 180-208 (2013).
  15. **Z. Gong, T. Chen, P. Ratilal, and N.C. Makris, “Temporal coherence of the acoustic field forward propagated through a continental shelf with random internal waves,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 134, 3476-3485 (2013).
  16. S. Jagannathan, Elizabeth T. Kusel, Purnima Ratilal and N. C. Makris, "Scattering from extended targets in range-dependent fluctuating ocean-waveguides with clutter from theory and experiments", J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 132 (2), 680-693, August 2012.
  17. N.C. Makris, "New Sonar Technology Reveals City-size Schools of Fish Low-frequency sound waves improve ocean sensing", IEEE Spectrum Feature Article, August 2011. http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/new-sonar-technology-reveals-citysize-schools-of-fish/0
  18. I. Bertsatos and N.C. Makris, "Estimating the instantaneous velocity of randomly moving target swarms in a stratified ocean waveguide by Doppler analysis" J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 130, 84, 2011. **
  19. N.C. Makris and I. Bertsatos, "Resolving Lambertian surface orientation from fluctuating radiance", J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 130, 1222, 2011.
  20. ** S. Jagannathan, B.K. Horn, P. Ratilal, N.C. Makris, "Force estimation and prediction from time-varying density images", IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell. 2011 June 33(6) 1132-46. (highlighted paper)
  21. **M. Zanolin, S. Vitale, N. C. Makris, "Application of asymptotic expansions for maximum likelihood estimators errors to gravitational waves from binary mergers: The single interferometer case," Phys. Rev. D 81, 124048 (2010) [16 pages]
  22. **I. Bertsatos and N. C. Makris, "Statistical biases and errors inherent in photoclinometric surface slope estimation with natural light," Icarus 208, 798-810 (2010).
  23. ** N.C. Makris, S. Jagannathan, and A. Ignisca, “Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing: Visualizing Life Around Seamounts,” Oceanography Vol. 23, No. 1, March 2010, Special Issue on Mountains in the Sea.
  24. **I. Bertsatos, M. Zanolin, T.R. Chen, P. Ratilal, N.C. Makris, "General second order covariance of Gaussian Maximum Likelihood Estimate applied to passive source localization in a fluctuating ocean waveguide,"J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 128, 2635-2651 (2010).
  25. **Z. Gong, M. Andrews, S. Jagannathan, R. Patel, J. M. Jech, N. C. Makris, P. Ratilal, “Low-frequency target strength and abundance of shoaling Atlantic herring Clupea harengus in the Gulf of Maine during the Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing (OAWRS) 2006 Experiment” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127, 104-123 (2010).
  26. **I. Bertsatos and N. C. Makris, “Statistical biases and errors inherent in photoclinometric surface slope estimation with natural light,” Icarus 208, 798-810 (2010).
  27. **S. Jagannathan, I. Bertsatos, D. Symonds, T. Chen, H. T. Nia, A. Jain, M. Andrews, Z. Gong, R. Nero, L. Ngor, M. Jech, O. R. Godø, S. Lee, P. Ratilal, Nicholas Makris, “Ocean Acoustics Waveguide Remote Sensing (OAWRS) of marine ecosystems,” Marine Ecology Progress Series, Vol. 395, 137-160 (2009). Supplementary online material.
  28. **Nicholas C. Makris, Purnima Ratilal, Srinivasan Jagannathan, Zheng Gong, Mark Andrews, Ioannis Bertsatos, Olav Rune Godoe, Redwood W. Nero, J. Michael Jech, "Critical Population Density Triggers Rapid Formation of Vast Oceanic Fish Shoals", Science, Vol. 323, No. 5922, 1734-1737 (March 27, 2009).(This link includes Movies.)
  29. ** T. Chen, P. Ratilal, N. C. Makris, "Temporal coherence after multiple forward scattering through random three-dimensional inhomogeneities in an ocean waveguide," J. Acoust. Soc. Am.124, 2812-2822 (2008)
  30. J. D. Wilson and N. C. Makris, "Quantifying hurricane destructive power, wind speed, and air-sea material exchange with natural undersea sound," Geophysical Research Letters 35, L10603 1-5 (2008)
  31. M. Betke, D. E. Hirsh, N. C. Makris, G. F. McCracken, M. Procopio, N. I. Hristov, S. Tang, A. Bagchi, J. Reichard, J. Horn, S. Crampton, C. J. Cleveland, and T. H. Kunz,"Thermal Imaging Reveals Significantly Smaller Brazilian Free-tailed Bat Colonies than Previously Estimated." Journal of Mammalogy, 89(1):18-24, February 2008
  32. A. Galinde, N. Donabed, S. Lee, N. C. Makris, and P. Ratilal, "Range-dependent waveguide scattering model calibrated for bottom reverberation in continental shelf environments" J. Acoust. Soc. Am 123, 1270-1281 (2008)
  33. ** 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.)
  34. **J. D. Wilson and N.C. Makris, “Ocean Acoustic Hurricane Classification,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 119, 168-181 (2006).
  35. **S. Lee and N.C. Makris, “The array invariant,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 119, 336-351 (2006).
  36. **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, 3532-3559 (2005).
  37. **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, 3560-3574 (2005).
  38. **S. Lee, B. Pappalardo, N.C. Makris, “Mechanics of tidally induced fractures in Europa's ice shell,” Icarus 177, 367-379 (2005).
  39. **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).
  40. **M. Zanolin, I. Ingram, A. Thode, N. C. Makris, “Asymptotic accuracy of geoacoustic inversions” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 116, 2031-2042 (2004)
  41. **S. Lee, M. Zanolin, A. Thode, R. Pappalardo, N.C. Makris, “Probing Europa’s Interior with Natural Sound Sources,” Icarus 165, 144-167 (2003)
  42. **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).
  43. **A. Thode, M. Zanolin, 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).
  44. **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).
  45. **P. Ratilal and N. C. Makris, “Extinction theorem for object scattering in a stratified medium,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 110, 2924-2945 (2001).
  46. **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).
  47. 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).
  48. **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).
  49. **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)
  50. **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)
  51. 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).
  52. N. C. Makris, “The effect of saturated transmission scintillation on ocean-acoustic intensity measurements,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 100, 769-783 (1996).
  53. N. C. Makris, “Parameter resolution bounds that depend on sample size,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 99, 2851-2861 (1996).
  54. N. C. Makris, “A foundation for logarithmic measures of fluctuating intensity in pattern recognition,” Optics Letters 20, 2012-2014 (1995).
  55. 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.)
  56. 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).
  57. M. D. Collins, N. C. Makris and L. T. Fialkowski, “Noise-cancellation and source localization,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 96, 1773-1776 (1994).
  58. N. C. Makris and J. M. Berkson, “Long-range backscatter from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 95, 1865-1881 (1994).
  59. N. C. Makris, “Imaging ocean-basin reverberation via inversion,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 94, 983-993 (1993).
  60. 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).
  61. N. C. Makris and I. Dyer, “Environmental correlates of arctic ice edge noise,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 90, 3288-3298 (1990).
  62. N. C. Makris and I. Dyer, “Environmental correlates of pack ice noise,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 79, 1434-1440 (1986).

Proceedings of Refereed Conferences:

  1. J. M. Berkson, N. C. Makris, R. Menis, T. L. Krout, and G. L. Gibian, “Long-range measurements of seafloor reverberation in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge area,” in Ocean Reverberation, edited by H. Urban, J. Preston and D. Ellis, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (1993).
  2. N. C. Makris, J. M. Berkson, W. A. Kuperman, and J. S. Perkins, “Ocean-basin scale inversion of reverberation data,” in Ocean Reverberation, edited by H. Urban, J. Preston, and D. Ellis, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (1993).
  3. M. D.  Collins, L. T. Fialkowski, N. C. Makris, W. A. Kuperman and J. S. Perkins, “Source localization in noisy ocean environments,” in Sea Surface Sound '94, edited by M. J. Buckingham and J. R. Potter, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (1994).
  4. N. C. Makris, W. A. Kuperman and F. Ingenito “Bounds on the detection of a submerged object insonified by surface noise in a shallow water waveguide,” in Sea Surface Sound '94, edited by M.J. Buckingham and J.R. Potter, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (1994).
  5. N. C. Makris, R. Menis, L. Avelino and J. M. Berkson, “Deterministic reverberation from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,” in Proceedings of the Second European Conference on Underwater Acoustics, edited by L. Bjorno, European Commission, Brussels (1994).
  6. Kristensen, A. Caiti, F. Ingenito, M. Max, J. M. Berkson, M. D. Collins, L.T. Fialkowski, N. C. Makris, B. E. McDonald, J. S. Perkins and W. A. Kuperman, “Geoacoustic inversion and focalization in shallow water environments,” in Full Field Inversion Methods in Ocean and Seismic Acoustics, edited by O. Diachok, Kluwer, Dordrecht (1994).
  7. N. C. Makris, S.P. Heckel, J.S. Perkins and J. Catipovic, “Optimizing experimental design for shallow water sound speed inversion,” in Full Field Inversion Methods in Ocean and Seismic Acoustics, edited by O. Diachok, Kluwer, Dordrecht (1994).
  8. M. Betke and N.C. Makris, “Fast object recognition in noisy images using simulated annealing,” Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computer Vision, MIT, Cambridge MA (June, 1995).
  9. N. C. Makris,  “A statistical foundation for logarithmic intensity measures in ocean acoustics,” in Proceedings of the Third European Conference on Underwater Acoustics, edited by J. Papadakis, European Commission, Brussels (1996).
  10. N. C. Makris, "Estimating surface orientation from sonar images," in High Frequency Acoustics in Shallow Water, edited by N.G. Pace, Kluwer, Dordrecht (1997).
  11. N. C. Makris, “The Statistics of Ocean-Acoustic Ambient Noise,” in Sea Surface Sound '97, edited by T. Leighton, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (1997).
  12. M. Betke and N.C. Makris, “Information-Conserving Object Recognition,” Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Vision, Bombay, India (Jan. 1998).
  13. ** 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, Kauau, Hawaii (December 2001).
  14. **M. Betke, D.E. Hirsh, A. Bagchi, N.I. Hristov, N.C. Makris, and T.H. Kunz. "Tracking Large Variable Numbers of Objects in Clutter." Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Minneapolis, MN, (June 2007)

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

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Last updated: September 28, 2020