Ocean Engineering with Dr. Jessica Sandoval
"The deep ocean is stranger and more alive than they imagined."
What students do
Over two-and-a-half weeks, students build a working hydrophone, an underwater microphone designed to capture sounds from the ocean. They learn the physics of how sound moves through water, the engineering of how to waterproof electronics for ocean use, and the data work of processing what their hydrophone records. By the end, each student takes home a working hydrophone they can deploy at a local waterway, the aquarium, or any body of water their family visits.
The build sits at the intersection of engineering, marine biology, and AI. Students record sound in test environments and learn to use AI tools to identify what they're hearing, fish, sea life, human noise, environmental signatures. By the final week, each student has a working hydrophone, a body of recordings they've made themselves, and the technical understanding to keep using both after the program ends.
Students who can only attend the first week can take the Build Week on its own; students who cannot attend in person can take the same course online.
About the mentor
Dr. Jessica Sandoval designs deep-sea remotely operated vehicles and tagged sperm whales as a Harvard postdoc on Project CETI, the effort to decode whale communication. She leads an in-person Discovery Lab at Pierrepont School in Westport, CT, where middle and high school students build a working hydrophone to take home, then train AI to make sense of what it records. An online version covers the same ground, from how sound travels underwater to the AI that interprets it, without the hands-on build. She also mentors a few students one-on-one.