We are glad to announce that Ersen’s Joseph, a master’s student in the Tandon lab, successfully defended his master’s thesis on September 18, 2025. Ersen’s has been with the group since his undergraduate years and continued working with Dr. Tandon for his master’s degree. He took an appointment as a Mechanical Engineer in Dr. Tom Farrar’s group at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in May 2023, while continuing to work on his master’s thesis.

Ersen’s thesis explores how to mitigate vibrations caused by the shedding of vortices as fluid flows past a rigid object. His work specifically focuses on how the addition of spiral grooves to stretch hoses – used by engineers at WHOI to maintain ‘quiet’ conditions for underwater acoustics via subsurface hydrophones –  can reduce the low-frequency noise contamination caused by vortex-induced-vibration (VIV).

Ersen’s performed an extensive suite of 2D and 3D Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations using ANSYS Fluent to test the impact that various combinations of groove depths and helical pitches would have on the oscillatory (quantified by the RMS lift coefficient) and drag (quantified by the drag coefficient) forces. Guided by his advisor – Dr. Amit Tandon – and his committee, Dr. Hangjian Ling from the Mechanical Engineering Department at UMass Dartmouth and Dr. Tom Farrar, Senior Scientist at WHOI, his study provides crucial insight into VIV mitigation techniques, which is important in ensuring structural integrity in marine environments and accuracy of acoustic measurements.

Congratulations Ersen’s! We wish you luck in your work at WHOI and beyond!

 

We are excited to announce that Dr. Siddhant Kerhalkar successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis titled “Salinity Stratification and Lateral Variability in the Northern Indian Ocean: From Calm Diurnal Cycles to Cyclone-Induced Recovery” on July 28, 2025.

The thesis was defended in front of a public audience including Dr. Kerhalkar’s distinguished committee members, who have been instrumental in his research. We thank them for their attendance –

– Prof. Amit Tandon (Advisor, Commonwealth Professor, DEOS, UMassD)
– Prof. Miles A Sundermeyer (Professor, DEOS, UMassD)
– Prof. Steven Lohrenz (Professor, DEOS, UMassD)
– Dr. J Thomas Farrar (Senior Scientist, WHOI)
– Dr. Kenneth Hughes (Senior Lecturer, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand)

Following the public session at SMAST, there was a private session with only Sid and his committee.

We also thank the several attendees, both in person in SMAST and online over zoom, of which there were several.

Dr. Siddhant Kerhalkar now starts as a postdoctoral investigator in Dr. Hyodae Seo’s lab at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in September. We wish him luck on this new journey!

Congratulations, Dr. Sid!

For this academic year, the mechanical engineering (MNE) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department joined their capstone programs. The capstone program brings together the technical and interpersonal skills needed for a student, in a team environment, to successfully plan, complete, and deliver a significant engineering project to a real customer. The culmination of this was the ECE and MNE Joint Senior Design Presentation Day held on May 1, 2025.

Team Aurelia, advised by Prof. Amit Tandon and Patrick Pasteris, and comprised of undergraduate students Ben Claxton, Eli Kroll, Shane Mercuri, and Jacob Tavares, with team lead James Bonnell bagged third place at the event. Their project involved improving the existing drive system on the Aurelia Upper Ocean Profiler – improving the depth capability and increasing operational life. They worked on testing out different motors for their power consumption and on designing a parking brake to install the profiler at depth without requiring active power. They also designed a variable gearbox to improve torque from the piston and increase the depth capability of the profiler.

Congratulations on this achievement to everyone involved!