Noah Lawrence-Slavas is the principle mechanical engineer for the NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory where he leads diverse engineering teams, collaborating with principle scientific investigators, to innovate and develop new tools for scientific research. Noah is passionate about applied research and development, and he thoroughly enjoys the process of turning an idea into an operational product. Over a 23-year career, Noah has gained extensive experience in ocean research and development, including the design of complex ocean instrumentation, buoys, and global observation arrays. He is well versed in the at-sea recovery and deployment of moorings and oceanographic instrumentation, as well as the unique challenges faced by ocean scientists.
Noah is particularly interested in how to rapidly develop, and scale, our ability to observe the environment by leveraging partnerships and holistic instrument design to deliver high quality, well described, and useful data directly to scientists. His current research focuses on the development of ocean carbon sensors, and expanding the spatial and temporal coverage of ocean observations through the use of robotic vehicles and small low-cost platforms. He has led the MAPCO2™, MADIC, and ASVCO2™ ocean carbon instruments’ engineering development efforts, and the design, integration, and validation of instrumentation into the saildrone Uncrewed Surface Vehicle (USV).
Noah has been honored with the Ron Brown Excellence in Innovation award (1), the U.S. Department of Commerce Gold(3), Silver(1) and Bronze (1) Medals, a NOAA Ocean and Atmospheric Research (OAR) employee of year award for his engineering contributions to ocean research, a Froehlich invitational fellowship, and a NOAA Technology Transfer Award for transitioning the MAPCO2 system from government research to industry.