Dr. Andrew Barnard is the director of the Great Lakes Research Center and an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics at Michigan Technological University, where he has been a faculty member since 2014. He previously was a research associate at the Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State University for eight years. He received his BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Tech in 2002 and 2004, respectively. He received a Ph.D. in Acoustics from Penn State University in 2010. Dr. Barnard is Board Certified by the Institute for Noise Control Engineering (INCE) and is a Certified LabVIEW Developer (CLD). Dr. Barnard has interests in acoustics, noise control, and vibration, as well as water resources and marine technology. Currently, he is interested in the commercialization of thermoacoustic thin-film loudspeakers made from carbon nanotubes (CNT). He is also interested in noise control methods for underwater electro-mechanical machines, such as electric motors and actuators. Though-ice acoustic propagation and on-ice source localization and tracking using machine learning are another current areas of study for Dr. Barnard. Finally, he is interested in the implementation of the maritime autonomous vehicles in commercial and defense applications.