Imagine being tasked with finding a nondescript gray car being driven somewhere in the United States. And imagine that your primary tools for finding that car are a few aircraft and a handful of vehicles of your own.

That’s the challenge the U.S. Navy faces when trying to find a pirate skiff trolling the seas off the coast of Somalia, the western Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea—an area the size of the United States. How can the search be optimized?

Find out on Friday, October 21!

Dr. Jim Hansen, head of the Marine Meteorology Division at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Monterey will be at MPC to discuss his research, STEM activities and internship opportunities this Friday in the Sam Karas room in the Library Technology Center (LTC).  Dr. Hansen has done extensive work in probabilistic prediction research at the Naval Research Laboratory. You can read a bit about his research here to get an idea of what that means in practice.