[ Dr. Mahdi Abdelguerfi: ] Let us take a moment to celebrate the accomplishment of DoD (Department of Defense) SMART fellow and GulfSCEI research assistant, Austin Schmidt. Austin successfully defended his doctoral dissertation titled "Coupled Machine Learning Models: Combining Observations and Numerical Analysis in a Physics-Regularized Approach" on November 14th. Austin’s research was funded by a research contract with the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) at NASA Stennis Space Center (SSC) – U.S. Department of the Navy.

Thank you to his committee members for their guidance and support: Dr. Mahdi Abdelguerfi (Committee Chair – GulfSCEI Director), Dr. Elias Ioup (Director Geospatial Sciences Center, NRL-SSC), Dr. Julian Simeonov (Section Head, NRL-SSC), Dr. Christopher Summa (Associate Professor of Computer Science), Dr. Vincent Xiaochuan (Associate Professor at the Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering School), and Dr. Meftahul Ferdaus (Postdoctoral Research Associate at GulfSCEI).

Next, Austin will join the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) where he will begin a career as a scientist supporting the U.S. Department of the Navy.

Our GulfSCEI family is proud to celebrate Austin’s exceptional efforts and achievements!

We wish Austin all the best as he begins the next leg of his professional journey!