Faculty: Dr. Teresa Ryan
As someone who researches acoustics, Dr. Teresa Ryan can appreciate the sound of a heavy metal band.
“I’m a member of the Slayer fan club,” said Ryan, an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering at East Carolina University. “It’s the live energy.”
Ryan has been conducting sound propagation research in cooperation with Catholic University of America for the last four years as part of a project funded through the Office of Naval Research.
The goal of the research is to help improve a numeric model that will inform military commanders how close a ship can get to an enemy shoreline without being heard based on the atmospheric and sea conditions. That’s important not only to protect the ship from enemy fire, but also to protect the lives of those onboard as well as assault personnel as they prepare to storm the beach.
Ryan and her students spent this past summer on the Outer Banks and in other locations testing the effects temperature, humidity, wind and seas have on the distance sound travels.
Ryan said the research has been promising enough for the Office of Naval Research to make her the lead researcher on a $370,000 grant for a more extensive effort to collect a database of measurements that represent a wider range of atmospheric conditions — all in an effort to improve that numeric model and better protect service members. Having grown up as part of a military family, it’s a personal mission for her as well.
Dr. Teresa Ryan, an ECU engineering professor, conducts acoustic research that could help save the lives of military service members.
Family influenced Ryan’s path toward her career. She worked on the family’s farm in southern Georgia, cropping tobacco and driving tractors. Ryan’s interest in engineering grew steadily on the farm, helped by an older sister who was attending Georgia Tech.
“To some degree because of my family being farmers and my having worked in and around a very mechanical and hands-on environment, it seemed a reasonable choice,” Ryan said of her engineering career. “I wasn’t intimidated by the thought of mechanical engineering because I had been around tractors and fixing things and seeing how my uncles and grandfather approached things. ‘OK, we’ve got to get this combine back in the field. We don’t have the time or the money to go 50 miles away to town to get a widget, so let’s figure out how to fix it and get back in the field because time is money.’ The combination of seeing that and having a sister already at Georgia Tech set me on a path that made sense.”
While at Georgia Tech, she obtained a position as an undergraduate researcher with Dr. Peter Rogers, a renowned underwater acoustics researcher.
“He was in the midst of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar Navy research project on underwater acoustics,” Ryan said. “I worked there doing various research tasks as an undergrad. I had that job all four years.”
Ryan couldn’t get sound out of her head.
“When I decided to pursue graduate school, it just made sense to go back to my academic roots,” she said. “Now I’ve come full circle because I have a lab and I have Navy funding.”
As someone who worked as a high school teacher as well as in product development in industry for a time, Ryan admits she could not have imagined a career focused on acoustics when she was younger.
“It’s not like I grew up thinking I wanted to do this,” Ryan said. “It’s just how it unfolded.”
That’s just one reason why she offers students this advice.
“Don’t be afraid to redirect,” she said. “Give it a good go, but don’t be afraid to change your mind. I was a high school teacher, industry researcher and then back to school, and now this.”
QUICK QUIZ
Last thing I watched on TV: I don’t have TV, but the last thing I watched was Joe Rogan and Neil deGrasse Tyson on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
First job: My first paid job was on the farm working in tobacco.
Guilty pleasure: A lazy day near water somewhere to crochet.
Favorite meal: Grilled fresh fish, preferably one that I caught.
One thing most people don’t know about me: I’m a member of the Slayer fan club.
FAST FACTS
Name: Dr. Teresa Ryan
Title: Assistant professor, Department of Engineering
Hometown: Southern Georgia
Colleges attended and degrees: Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech; Master of Science in mechanical engineering from Catholic University of America; Doctor of Philosophy in mechanical engineering from Catholic University of America.
PIRATE PRIDE
Years at ECU: 6 ½
What I love about ECU: It’s two-fold. I have incredible colleagues in the department, and there’s a shared focus on quality undergrad education. I am able to give undergraduate students this quality research experience, which is where my passion lies, and the fact that my passion lines up with the things that my department and my college are happy to support makes this a really good fit. There’s this collegial atmosphere and there’s an emphasis placed on giving the students the ability to succeed.
Research interests: Acoustics and vibrations
Favorite class to teach: ENGR 3024 – mechanics of materials. It’s a hard class, and I like to be able to show the students that they can understand it, that they can crack the nut so to speak, and the fact that it’s a lab class, so you do the math and write the paper, and then you get to pick up the actual instruments and make measurements and get to see how the math relates to a real object. I think that’s pretty powerful. It’s one of the first courses in the sequence. Most students who take it are juniors, and it’s one of the first courses in the engineering sequence where it really is connecting in with that lab experience. It’s an opportunity to help them with lab reports and an opportunity to help them become better technical communicators. I think that’s really important. All of that is tied into this one monster class. It’s fun to see them succeed in something that is challenging.