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Hopkins Collaboration Expands Access to Maritime Testing and Advanced Sensing

An additively manufactured quantum dot waveguide sensor prototype

Students from the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering collaborated with researchers at Johns Hopkins APL to make maritime testing and optical sensing more accessible and cost-effective. This image shows the students’ successful additively manufactured quantum dot waveguide sensor prototype. On the left side, an ultraviolet light-emitting diode is exciting light into the waveguide filled with quantum dots, whose emission is collected by a photodiode array at the end of the waveguide (right side) to be processed to sense temperature and strain.

Credit: Johns Hopkins APL/Michael Sherburne

Oct 1, 2026
Christiana Littrell

Students from the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering (WSE) collaborated with researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, to make maritime testing and optical sensing more accessible and cost-effective. Their work, part of WSE’s senior design mechanical engineering capstone, has various national security applications.

“We gave the students a very difficult and open-ended problem, and what they designed in two short semesters exceeded all expectations,” said Noah Corbitt, a mechanical engineer at APL and one of the students’ mentors.

“Their research will help us iterate quickly, reduce risk, and ultimately deliver robust, low-cost solutions to the government faster,” added Brendan McNelly, an assistant program manager at APL and another mentor to the WSE students.

Making Unmanned Vessels More Accessible

Unmanned surface vessels (USVs) are often used for maritime experimentation and data collection for the U.S. Navy, but many models are heavy, expensive, and specialized. A team of students — Aaron Lefkowitz, Alexander Kim, Gabriella Goytizolo, Matthew Roesler, and Shivam Dixit — was challenged by APL researchers McNelly, Corbitt, Jason Reid, and Alan Huang to design and build a low-cost, versatile, and portable USV that could be employed for various scientific applications.

The students evaluated the most cost-effective off-the-shelf options for each USV subsystem — such as the power system, sensors, and command and control electronics — and integrated them on a small-scale prototype to verify overall system functionality. They then tested the prototypes in WSE professor Louis Whitcomb’s hydrodynamics tank on Johns Hopkins University’s campus.

APL staff and WSE students pose with an operational prototype of an inexpensive, modular, and lightweight USV

From left, APL’s Noah Corbitt and Brendan McNelly; WSE students Gabriella Goytizolo, Aaron Lefkowitz, Matthew Roesler, and Shivam Dixit; and APL’s Alan Huang and Jason Reid stand with the student team’s operational prototype of an inexpensive, modular, and lightweight USV that can be deployed for maritime testing. WSE student Alexander Kim is not pictured.

Credit: Johns Hopkins APL/Christiana Littrell

Applying what they learned in the lab, the students fabricated a full-size prototype and tested it on the water in Maryland’s Triadelphia Reservoir. They built a USV that is inexpensive, modular, and portable and can be deployed from a pickup truck in under 15 minutes by as few as three people. Many USVs weigh hundreds of pounds and take several hours to deploy via crane.

“The government typically puts expensive technologies on the water for testing,” McNelly said. “Having commercial off-the-shelf and easily deployable systems allows us to test and validate quickly, reducing costs and minimizing risks to specialized Navy platforms.”

The students’ solution enables faster iteration on experiments and makes USV-based studies more accessible to smaller or less resourced teams. The students presented their research at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers OCEANS 2026 Conference held from Sept. 21 to 24 in Monterey, California.

Developing Cost-Effective Optical Sensors

The second student team — Joshua Sic, Ronald Garcia, Patrick Dass, Joel Rentas-Velez, and Casey Shi — was challenged by mentor Michael Sherburne, a radio frequency and microwave design engineer at APL, to develop a low-cost, flexible, multimodal additively manufactured optical sensor that can simultaneously measure temperature and strain. Today, engineers need multiple tools or specialized sensors — costing around $5,000 each — to make these measurements, which are used to monitor aircraft or industrial pipelines, or in magnetic resonance imaging environments.

The students combined quantum dots — tiny semiconductor nanoparticles that glow when activated by light and shift their emission wavelength with temperature and mechanical strain — with a 3D-printed silicone waveguide, the structure that guides the light wave. Shi compared the design to a hot dog: The cylinder-shaped silicone shell is the “bread,” the waveguide is the “meat,” and the quantum dots-loaded core is the “ketchup.”

WSE students hold their multimodal optical sensor

From left, WSE students Joshua Sic, Patrick Dass, Casey Shi, Ronald Garcia, and Joel Rentas-Velez hold their multimodal optical sensor made from quantum dots and silicon. Their prototype costs just $36, compared to similar existing sensors costing $5,000, and has been submitted for a patent and paper publication.

Credit: Johns Hopkins University/Will Kirk

After experimenting with several different materials combinations, the students developed a structure that holds its shape, transmits light efficiently, and behaves consistently in a temperature-controlled environment. Their prototype also cost only $36 to produce, making it lower cost and therefore easier to reproduce.

The students submitted an intellectual property disclosure for their prototype and will present their work at the IEEE Sensors 2026 Conference in Rotterdam, Netherlands, later this month.

“Their work has various defense applications, such as nondestructive testing, structural health monitoring, and improved sensing avenues for robotics and actuators, which can help detect problems in equipment earlier and create better sensors for machines and robots,” Sherburne said.

The Johns Hopkins University mechanical engineering senior design project pairs engineering students with APL researchers each year to solve a problem in support of the Lab’s mission. After working exclusively with the mechanical engineering program for the past 20 years, APL will support projects across four programs next year.

“APL’s partnership with our design program benefits everyone involved,” said Rich Bauernschub, WSE mechanical engineering professor and lead instructor of the senior design capstone. “Students gain valuable mentorship from APL engineers and hands-on experience in a professional product development environment, while APL receives fully developed hardware and software that have been tested both in the laboratory and in field settings.”

Areas of Impact

The Applied Physics Laboratory, a not-for-profit division of The Johns Hopkins University, meets critical national challenges through the innovative application of science and technology. For more information, visit www.jhuapl.edu.

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