ME Professor M. Reza Alam Featured in American Scientist Cover Article on Ocean Cloaking

The September/October 2015 issue of American Scientist tackles the subject of Ocean Cloaking in the cover article “A Protective Cloak Against Earthquakes and Storms,” referencing the research of ME Professor M. Reza Alam. The article discusses a novel type of cloaking device proposed by Professor Alam back in 2012, which would help protect against damaging ocean waves. The proposed cloak “takes advantage of the presence of subsurface disturbances called interfacial waves that commonly arise in the ocean at a depth where the temperature, and thus the density, of water changes drastically. By putting a patterned structure on the seafloor around a buoy or offshore platform, it is theoretically possible to convert the surface waves approaching the structure into subsurface waves that pass harmlessly underneath on the other side of the structure, those waves would then be returned to the surface.”