Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette Timothy Havens, the new director of the Great Lakes Research Center at Michigan Technological University, stands by an autonomous jetski at the GLRC Jan. 14. The jetski, designed to operate in high sea states, was trained by using cameras and GPS to record the jetski as an expert rode it through high waves. Machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms will be used so the jetski can replicate the expert’s performance itself. More testing will be done on it this summer, Havens said.

HOUGHTON — The Great Lakes Research Center has a new director.

Timothy Havens started in the position this month, replacing Andrew Barnard.

Havens was associate dean for research in the College of Computing, and also directs the Institute for Computing and Cyber Systems at Tech. As director, he said, he gets to focus not just on his own research, but helping others find resources and strategizing on how to build more resources.

“I see it as not just thinking about my research, but helping others think about their research too, and that’s really exciting for me,” he said. “I love learning about new things. The thing I love most about being a professor is that I get to interact with students on a daily basis, and help them solve puzzles and learn about the latest and greatest pieces of knowledge that are out there in the world and help them discover new knowledge as well.”

The 50,000-square-foot facility launched in 2012, and now has 12 full-time staff members. While the center is focused on Great Lakes, coastal and ocean research, collaborations between multiple disciplines at the university have enabled projects to expand beyond those areas, Havens said.

“You can solve bigger problems with new ideas, see things from new perspectives,” he said. “So that’s what we’re all about, enabling that research to happen.”

With computing being so pervasive, Havens sees overlap between the GLRC and the Institute for Computing. One of his interests has been how to make robotics systems less failure-prone in the real world. That dovetails with the work the GLRC does at its Marine Autonomy Research Site — water in the 30-mile radius around Tech that includes the Portage Canal, Torch Lake and parts of Lake Superior.

This spring, Tech will launch a large autonomous surface vessel that will allow for longer-duration missions in Lake Superior. It will join a fleet of robotics and autonomous equipment, including the Iver and a surface jetski developed to autonomously navigate high waves.

“With me, it’s not just about being a research administrator for what’s currently going on at the Great Lakes Research Center, but also thinking about how we can build upon that and solve new and exciting problems that haven’t even been thought of at the nexus of different disciplines coming together,” Havens said.

Havens sees the GLRC continuing its momentum in its core strengths, such as studying the Great Lakes, its fisheries, its hydrology and its ecosystem. He also sees it growing by bringing together scientists from different backgrounds, whether social sciences or geology, to come up with ways to tackle large, impactful problems.

One subject could be what happens out in Lake Superior during the winter. Once Tech pulls its buoys in for the year, it’s left to get information from shore or via satellite. But getting the same quality of information from the summer months could help researchers understand how the ice cover impacts waves, the ecosystem and the winter weather systems.

“Understanding those things, it takes scientists from many different disciplines designing the systems, designing the algorithms, doing the data analysis, and then interpreting that into understanding the biology and hydrodynamics there,” he said.

As the new director, Havens is doing a lot of observing and learning. Some of his immediate priorities include bringing machine learning and artificial intelligence together with the research going on. Earlier that day, he had been working on a proposal to combine artificial intelligence with hydrodynamics models. That could lead to a better understanding of how ice and waves interact, and what that means for coastal systems in Lake Superior and the wider Great Lakes region.

“I’m very interested in the spring to see what we can do in the spring with the autonomous vessels that we have in testing things like autonomous systems that can navigate our Keweenaw waterway, safety, cybersecurity, things like that,” he said.

Havens attended Tech from 1994 to 2000, graduating with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering. From there, he went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, where his work included research for the Air Force. He then received a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Michigan State University, he returned to Tech.

“I always wanted to come back to Michigan Tech,” he said. “I think this is the best place in the world.”

Havens is also interested in spreading the word about the GLRC’s work beyond academic circles. During a tour of the facility, he excitedly points out a number of vehicles,

“Where we have events with our boats and autonomous vehicles, please don’t be afraid to come and ask questions about what we do, because we’re really, really excited about our research,” he said.