Professor of Oceanography, University of Washington

Principal Investigator and Director, Regional Scale Nodes Program

Jerome M. Paros Endowed Chair in Sensor Networks

John Delaney joined the faculty of the University of Washington's School of Oceanography in 1977. He is a Professor of Oceanography and holds the Jerome M. Paros Endowed Chair in Sensor Networks.

He is a passionate and tenacious advocate for launching next-generation ocean science and educational capabilities. Success depends upon using new approaches made possible by distributed robot-sensor networks throughout the oceanic environment. (See A 2020 Vision for Ocean Science.)

Such networks will enable adaptive, real-time interactive research on energetic and episodic natural phenomena operating throughout the world's oceans. This approach is exemplified by the National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative.

The regional program within this NSF Initiative is known as the Regional Scale Nodes, an innovative, cabled network of instruments in the northeast Pacific Ocean. John Delaney leads the team at the University of Washington that has been charged with construction of this network, which was initially known as NEPTUNE. He often gives public lectures on the potential of new technologies to revolutionize ocean science and education.

The voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having "new eyes".

- Marcel Proust