Marcia Isakson

Ballard:

My name is Megan Ballard. Today’s date is August 16th, 2024. We are conducting this interview over Zoom, in Austin, Texas, U.S.A. The time is 3:15pm. And I am about to interview Marcia Isakson for the Acoustical Society of America. Technical committees: Underwater Acoustics, Acoustical Oceanography, and Computational Acoustics.

Marcia, what is your present address?

Isakson:

I live at [redacted].

Ballard:

What is your present phone number?

Isakson:

[redacted]

Ballard:

Who is your present employer.

Isakson:

The University of Texas at Austin.

Ballard:

How long have you been with them?

Isakson:

So, I’ve been at UT Austin for 27 years. But right now I’m working for Applied Research Laboratories, and I’ve been at Applied Research Laboratories for 23 years.

Ballard:

What is their present business?

Isakson:

We do research and development for the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, and some for the Department of Energy. Most of our research is… it spans basic research through applied research in support of national security.

Ballard:

What’s your present job title?

Isakson:

I’m the Director of the Signal and Information Sciences Laboratory.

Ballard:

What do you do there?

Isakson:

I’m in charge of a very diverse portfolio that’s supporting the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, and the Department of Energy, and all kinds of applications, including active sonar, systems engineering, quantum information sciences, hypersonics, computational fluid dynamics, rotorcraft acoustics, natural language processing, data and simulation, and geospatial sensing.

Ballard:

What year did you join the ASA?

Isakson:

2001.

Ballard:

What was your age and profession at that time?

Isakson:

I was 31, and I was a research associate here at the Applied Research Laboratories focusing on the underwater acoustics.

Ballard:

What were your reasons for joining the ASA?

Isakson:

The ASA provides a really great collaborative space. So, there was a number of reasons. One was to meet scientists and engineers doing the same type of research I was doing in underwater acoustics, to meet them and learn about what they were doing. Another reason would be to present my own work to get peer feedback. And the third reason was that our sponsors from the Office of Naval Research kind of use that as a light program review. So, they would attend the ASA, and they would see what their portfolio was doing. So, it was for them a portfolio review and community-building at the same time.

Ballard:

Was there anyone who encouraged you to join the ASA? And if so, who?

Isakson:

Dr. Nick Chotiros. He’s the one that hired me here at Applied Research Laboratories. He said that I really needed to join the ASA, for all the reasons that I just described.

Ballard:

What ASA committees are you a member of?

Isakson:

Currently, I’m a member of the technical committees Underwater Acoustics, Acoustical Oceanography, and Computational Acoustics. I’m also the chair of Publication Policies. And then, before that I was a member and chair of many other committees.

Ballard:

What positions in the ASA did you hold, or presently hold?

Isakson:

I’ve done a lot of work with the ASA. My first foray into this was, I was a member of Women in Acoustics, and after a few years they asked me to chair that. And from there I joined the Executive Council, and after the Executive Council I was the President for a year, from 2017 to 2018. During that time, I chaired External Affairs. I chaired the Audit Committee, for example, and I also was on an ad hoc committee for publication services, since we were really looking at how to negotiate our contract with American Institute of Physics Publishing, AIPP, who publish our journal. And I also have co-chaired a major meeting for the ASA. I co-chaired the Sydney, Australia meeting in December of 2023.

Ballard:

Was there any particular ASA meeting or meetings that stand out as being something special, humorous, or different?

Isakson:

So, my favorite meeting of the ASA has to be the Sydney meeting, and the Sydney meeting was an idea from Brian Ferguson. He approached me when I was on the Executive Council and said he wanted to do a meeting in Sydney, Australia, and I thought that would be really great, because we hardly ever had been doing meetings in Asia. We had done some. For example, we had a Hong Kong meeting. But this would be really different. We had an agreement now and at that time with Europe, so that we would do a meeting in Europe, and then four years later a European meeting here, and then four years later a European meeting in Europe—this kind of back and forth thing. And I really thought that that would be great to do with Asia, too, because of the special location of Australia—and they’re one of our strongest allies, especially in that region—because it would make a great connection with Asia, and just because, you know, it’s fun to go to Sydney. I encouraged Brian to approach all the TCs and just take a vote, and if all the TCs, the technical committees, decided that they would want to go to Sydney, then we could probably do the meeting because you would have support from the members. So, that’s exactly what he did, and he went to every TC, and they took a vote, and every one of them wanted to go to Sydney—except for Musical Acoustics, it was a tie.

So, because of that overwhelming support for the Sydney meeting, we planned to do a meeting in December of 2021, and that’s when the Executive Director of the ASA called me up and said, “Marcia, you want this meeting? Well, what do you think about being chair?” I didn’t really expect that—I probably should have. And so, I went to my leadership here at Applied Research Laboratories to see if they would support my time to do that, because it’s not a small undertaking, and they said yes. So, we had planned the meeting to be in December 2021, and then the pandemic hit. And it didn’t take very long into the pandemic till we realized that that meeting was going to have to be postponed because world travel had really shut down. So, we shifted it to December 2023, and after a long, arduous task to get there, and many delays obviously, it was an extremely successful meeting. It was very well attended. People really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it myself. I had gone down to Australia twice, just to plan the meeting, so I knew a little bit, but I still got to see new things. When I was there, I got to see a glow worm cave. But the real important thing to me was, it was a truly international meeting, and I feel like we did connect better with our Asia partners because of it.

Ballard:

Are there any members that you have met that especially influenced your future?

Isakson:

So many members. It’s hard to overstate, you know, the effect that people that I met at the ASA have had on my career. If I had to pick one, it would probably be James Miller from the University of Rhode Island. He was President when I was on the Executive Council, and he nominated me for President. Honestly, I didn’t think I would be elected, but I was, and he really instilled in me a service to the ASA. And also, he’s a great collaborator, fun to work with, really smart, and someone just to emulate.

Ballard:

Is there anything you would care to say about the ASA, past, present, or future?

Isakson:

ASA has had a huge impact on my career. It’s opened up opportunities for me, and I’m very grateful to the society. Presently, I’m looking forward to the joint meeting with the ICA, the International Conference on Acoustics, that’ll be in May in New Orleans. I’m really looking forward to the future of the society. I really hope that they continue to focus on this collaborative environment that they have. I think that is the most special thing about ASA. It’s a multidisciplinary organization, I mean, it spans all of acoustics—not just underwater and acoustical oceanography, but all of acoustics. And we can really learn from each other because of that. So, keeping that interdisciplinary nature and that collaborative, very collegial environment is something I’m looking forward to for the ASA, for the future.

Ballard:

Besides ASA, what other professional organizations do you belong to?

Isakson:

I’m also a member of IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society. And then I also do work with the National Academies; I’m on the Ocean Studies Board. And I’m also on, right now, a decadal survey committee for the NSF, for ocean science. And then, lastly, I’m involved with the Hertz Foundation. The Hertz Foundation gives out scholarships every year, they conduct workshops, and as a Hertz fellow I keep engaged with that community.

Ballard:

Have you provided an oral history interview to any other organization? And if so, which ones?

Isakson:

Nope.

Ballard:

When and where were you born.

Isakson:

I was born at Oak Forest, Illinois, on January 29th, 1970.

Ballard:

What were your parents’ occupations?

Isakson:

My dad was a biochemist—he was a fermentation specialist—and my mother taught school for a little while, but most of the time she was a mom.

Ballard:

How would you describe yourself during those early years?

Isakson:

Unfortunately, I was not the best-behaved child in the world. And I was always interested in anything that had to do with math and science. I loved puzzles and games and knots and going outside. I had a dog, so mostly I was outside.

Ballard:

As a youngster, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Isakson:

Didn’t really know, but I knew that whatever I did had to involve math and science, because it was really something I loved all the time.

Ballard:

What were your hobbies, special interests, and heroes?

Isakson:

Most of the time, when I wasn’t outside riding my bike or doing whatever, I was reading. I really loved reading books, and so my heroes were all fictional heroes. I would say that maybe Frodo Baggins was one of my big heroes back when I was young.

Ballard:

What subjects, events, and activities did you enjoy most in high school?

Isakson:

I loved physics and math—and I was good at it, too, so that also helped. For activities, I was on the math team, I ran track and long-distance running, because then you can think a long time when you’re running like that.

Ballard:

Looking back, was there any person or persons during that timeframe that had strong influence on your future?

Isakson:

I had an algebra teacher that was really influential, and really told me that, you know, math can be your future, and I really appreciated that. And he also would kind of feed interesting problems to me outside of class. I had a calculus teacher that was very similar, that really took an interest and showed me a lot of problems that we weren’t particularly doing in class.

Ballard:

Moving to college. Where did you first go to college? And what was your major?

Isakson:

I went to the United States Military Academy at West Point, and I had a dual degree, dual major in both engineering physics and mathematics. [Written addition by MI: I did not have a childhood interest in joining the military not any family members in the service so going to West Point was a bit of a fluke. We were moving from Chicago to Connecticut in my junior year of high school. While we were traveling, we decided to visit West Point to see the beautiful campus and learn its history. On the tour, my mom said that I should apply and the tour guide said that I would not get in since it was very competitive. Well, I took on that challenge and even though I had to pass a physical fitness test, receive a congressional nomination and, then, be admitted to the academy, I started as a new cadet in 1988.]

Ballard:

In undergraduate, did you belong to any special clubs, or participate in any special school activities, such as chess, math, newspapers, sports, or music?

Isakson:

I did. At West Point, they like to schedule every second of your day, so every second of your day seems to fill with activities, and if you don’t choose something for yourself, they will choose it for you. So, if you don’t choose to do a sport or other activity, then on half of the week you do intramural sports, and on the other half of the week you do drills—that’s like marching. You might have seen the parades at West Point. That would be drill. So, most people have to do drill. You only didn’t do drill if you were a varsity athlete, which I was not, but for the intramural sports, I figured out pretty quickly that I didn’t care for West Point intramural sports. The reasons are I’m not a very good athlete, to be honest with you, except for long-distance running, and I never had played basketball or soccer or flag football before, and they were all co-ed teams.

There was a certain number of women that had to play on the team all the time, and so you get put in these positions where you’ve got an extremely competitive cohort, and you are definitely the weak link. So, I chose to choose my own sport instead of having West Point choose them for me. I decided to join the fencing team, and I liked fencing because it’s kind of like chess with swords, or epee or foil, and so I could kind of learn a new skill and not have to be the weak link on the basketball team, for example. So, I did that. I also did a few sports with West Point that I enjoyed, which was… I liked swimming, and so I was a coach of the swimming team when I was a senior. And they also needed a coach for the soccer team when I was a senior, and I told them, “Hey, you know, maybe you pick somebody else?” But that was fine, I had a soccer coach whisperer, and we all had a great time on that team. It was a really good soccer experience without a, you know… we actually did okay. Those are the things that at West Point I was really interested in.

And then anything that I could do extra in math and science, I pursued that. For example, they had me go to Brookhaven National Laboratory for a whole semester. So, I left West Point the second half of my junior year and was assigned as the first cadet at Brookhaven National Laboratory. I took one class at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, and that whole semester I researched a nuclear engineering problem. It was a fast breeder reactor. I actually got my first publication from that, made some lifelong friends at Brookhaven. And there at Brookhaven, it was my first exposure into research science, and I just loved it. I felt like I had found my community. So, I wasn’t really sure where in research science I was going to end up, but that experience at Brookhaven was really great, from West Point.

Ballard:

Was there any particular person, teacher, professor, or someone special, who had strong influence on your future?

Isakson:

Yes, so when I got back from Brookhaven, John Robertson—at that time he was a major—in the physics department took a special interest in in me, and he thought that I would be a good competitor for one of the national fellowships. So, we focused on the Hertz Foundation fellowship, which is a highly selective fellowship. Usually they get about 900 applicants and they chose 12. The Hertz Foundation interviews are very technical. I’m actually an interviewer now, so I’m on the other side of the table. And it’s a two-round interview. So, the application packet is very extensive, and then the interviews are really hard. So, he took a whole semester to coach me for those interviews, and it was successful. I really appreciate John Robertson for that. If it hadn’t been for him to even suggest it—because it wasn’t on my radar—and if I hadn’t won the fellowship, I would not have gone to grad school right after West Point. I would have gone to the operational army like the rest of my classmates and my whole life would have been different.

Ballard:

Was there anything in your college days that you especially believed in?

Isakson:

Yes, so you can’t go to West Point and put a uniform on every single day and go in the summers and do military training every single summer, and not believe in national security. You are putting yourself, your whole life, in support of national security. So, I believe in that. And I have kind of… my whole life, even today, is still in support of national security.

Ballard:

Looking back, would you go to the same college and take the same major? If you could start over and do it all over again?

Isakson:

Yes, so I have to… that’s a little qualified. Yes, because going to West Point is not like going to a regular college, so I missed out on the regular college experience. However, West Point is a unique experience that not everybody gets to experience. I got to drive a tank. I’m qualified on a rifle. I shot the main gun of a tank. I’ve shot a howitzer. I’ve shot a bazooka. I’ve learned all these infantry tactics I hope never to use and so… and I made lifelong friends, as most people do in college. But it is a little bit different of a society. And I met my husband. So, because of all that, I think it really made me who I am today, and I wouldn’t give it up.

Ballard:

Moving on to graduate school. Did you go on to graduate training for a master’s degree? And if yes, where?

Isakson:

Yes, because of the Hertz Foundation fellowship, I was allowed to go to graduate school directly out of West Point, which is unusual, and I chose the University of Texas at Austin, mostly because my husband, who graduated a year ahead of me and was stationed at what was Fort Hood but now Fort Cavazos. So, when he was graduating, we were kind of looking at this, and there weren’t a lot of army bases that were close to one of the universities that would have a really good physics program. Here in Texas was one of them. So, that’s why I chose University of Texas at Austin, and my major was physics.

Ballard:

And what led you to that choice of school and curriculum?

Isakson:

Yeah, basically, it was the location close to the army base up at then Killeen. But as far as the curriculum was concerned, when I got here I didn’t know what kind of physics I wanted to do, but I looked around and there was a really good lab doing some really nice work on surface science, so I decided to do that. It’s complicated because it involved lasers that would prepare molecules in particular molecular states, and then there was an interaction with the surfaces. So, it was really nice and complex physics, but it was also experimental, and I love experimental.

Ballard:

How were you supported?

Isakson:

I was supported by the Hertz Foundation.

Ballard:

What was your master’s thesis on?

Isakson:

I looked at a surface reaction of hydrogen chloride on ice surfaces which is an important mechanism for ozone depletion in the Antarctic. So, that’s another region that I really believe in is, you know, the Earth’s climate. Even back then, I did this paper on this reaction, and now that paper is my most highly cited first-author paper, even though it was my graduate work.

Ballard:

Did you continue on for your PhD, and if so, what led to that, toward the school and the curriculum?

Isakson:

I did. I had a gap [MI: due to my army service] which I think we’ll cover in a moment. So, I did. I went again to the University of Texas at Austin to continue on the work in the surface science lab.

Ballard:

What was your doctorate thesis on?

Isakson:

My doctorate thesis was a little bit more theoretical than the applied thesis I did my master’s degree on. And we were looking at some basic physics of surfaces. We were particularly interested in if the prepared rotational state of a molecule had an influence on its sticking coefficient on a surface—basically, if it could be trapped on the surface. We would prepare the molecules, a hydrogen molecule, first of all. We would have a nozzle which would put it in a very low-energy states, so no vibration basically, and just a couple of rotational states, and then would prepare with the polarized lasers to see if it was spinning like a helicopter onto the surface, or if it was cartwheeling onto the surface, and if that affected its sticking coefficient on the surface. And what was nice about hydrogen—and we were looking at a palladium-111 surface—is that you can describe it with the Schrödinger’s equation, so you can kind of get at least pretty close to an analytic model for that interaction.

Ballard:

Which school had the greatest influence on your future?

Isakson:

I guess I’m… I’m to choose a school? And I’m still at University of Texas at Austin, but I work in national security, which definitely came out of West Point. So, I’m not going to answer that.

Ballard:

When you were a student, did you ever conduct any classes for the college or the university?

Isakson:

I did. I was an assistant instructor for physics, both mechanics and E&M, at UT Austin.

Ballard:

Were you ever in the military? And if so, what branch? How long did you serve? And then what years did that count?

Isakson:

Yes, I was in the army because of West Point and I served from ’92 to ’97. From ’92 to ’94, I actually was a [first] lieutenant, but [with] at a master’s degree. From ’94 to ’97, I was at now-Fort Cavazos.

[Written addition by MI]: I entered my service as a first lieutenant due to my 2 years of service in graduate school and my degree.

Ballard:

What were your duties in the military?

Isakson:

I started out… so, I was an ordinance officer, which doesn’t just mean bullets. Ordinance officers are in charge of maintenance, so I was a maintenance officer. First, I was in charge of a warehouse that housed repair parts, and then not too long after that I became a shop officer, a job I really enjoyed. It was a direct-support maintenance unit. I had maybe a couple of hundred soldiers that were conducting maintenance. We fixed everything from radios and small arms to tanks and engines. We had some maintenance support teams that would go out with operational units but mostly we had a huge bay, and I was just in charge of making the shop work well. So, I would keep in charge of repair part inventory, for example. And I was basically a project manager, and I would schedule the maintenance and make sure that we had people working to support the maintenance for direct-support maintenance.

And then at the end of my tenure at Fort Cavazos-now, they asked me if I would be the operations officer for the battalion. So, as the operations officer for the battalion, we had four companies: three maintenance companies and one supply company. And as the operations officer I was also the intelligence officer for a while. I had a staff of about 18 that reported directly to me, and we were in charge of all the military operations for the battalion. The battalion was about 900 soldiers, so that means that if we had to send some people out like we did—we sent some teams out to Guantanamo Bay—that would go through my office. All of the certification for rifles for marksmanship, for, you know, transportation all came through my office. And then, when we brought the unit out to the field, I was in charge of the defense and intelligence of the battalion, so I would coordinate all the defensive operations around the battalion.

Ballard:

Was there anything you recall about your military service that you feel had some significance on your future?

Isakson:

Definitely. So, a few things that I’ve learned in my military service: first, our men and women in uniform, they give everything that they have every day to support national security, so we should do the same for them. I also got to know soldiers pretty well. And knowing soldiers well, I think, makes me a better researcher for the Navy and the Army, to understand kind of where they’re coming from, because when we put something technical out and we put it in the hands of the warfighter, we need to make sure it can be utilized well by that warfighter. So, I think that’s really important. And then also just having that military experience, I think, makes it easier for me to talk to people from Department of Defense, because we have kind of a common way of thinking, even though I wasn’t in the military for very long. But the experience at West Point and the experience at Fort Cavazos really prepared me well to talk to people in defense.

Ballard:

And what was your highest rank?

Isakson:

Captain.

Ballard:

After college, what was your first place of employment, your first title? And what did you do there?

Isakson:

So, after graduate school, I really wasn’t sure what I would do. I had gotten out of the army, went back and got my PhD. And there was kind of this like… well, everything had kind of been planned up to that point, and I wasn’t really sure what to do. So, about a year before I graduated, I looked for an internship and was hired here at Applied Research Laboratories. It was the only interview I’d ever had up until just a few years ago, and I only had one. And Nick Chotiros actually said, “Well, you can start in a few weeks.” I’m like, “Okay.” So, I came over here as an intern, as a graduate student intern, and then really just never left. While working here I finished my PhD and just graduated, and then I became a research associate here. I never was a postdoc here, mostly because, a very short time after I got my PhD, Nick Chotiros chose to become a program manager for the Office of Naval Research and I took over the small group that we had.

Ballard:

Tell me a little about your research career. What kind of acoustics did you study? Who are your sponsors? Were there any memorable projects?

Isakson:

Yeah. I study underwater acoustics, so half computational underwater acoustics and half experimental. And I also taught graduate-level underwater acoustics. My sponsors included the Office of Naval Research, the Naval Oceanographic Office, and Exxon Mobil. Memorable projects… so I’ve been out to sea 15 times, on various levels. Sometimes “out to sea” is, you know, maybe a little bit stretching some of these things. But everything from going out on a fishing boat in a bay and being able to come back at night, to going out into the ocean for weeks. Those are all very memorable experiences. Some of the more fun of those field tests were done in the Mediterranean. We had a nice collaboration with what was then called the NATO Underseas Research Center, and we would go to Italy and leave from La Spezia. We did some experiments off the coast of Elba Island, and we were interested in sediment acoustics, so we would go into Biodola Bay, and we moor down, and we take all these measurements on the shallow-water sand in Biodola Bay, and then in the evening we come and we dock. And then they would just—it was off season—they would open up a restaurant for us, whatever they caught off the boat, just cook it up Italian-style, and it was wonderful to be with the crew, and to be in beautiful Elba for those experiments.

And another one that we did with the NATO Undersea Research Center, we left from the south coast of France and we were on a ship that was featured in a Wes Anderson movie, The Life Aquatic. That was really fun to be on that ship. In that case we did not come back. But the crew was wonderful, and it was really fun to be out there. We had an ROV [remotely operated vehicle], and we were interested in looking at scattering from the ocean seafloor. So, we were taking consecutive, simultaneous measurements of the micro-roughness of the sea floor, using a projected laser beams and acoustics at the same time. That was a really fun experiment, too, and I don’t mean to denigrate the rest of them, but it’s really hard to match, you know, France and Italy on field tests.

Ballard:

What did you like best about your research?

Isakson:

I love that I was independent. You know, that has its pluses and minuses, so being independent means that I could kind of focus on whatever I thought was interesting as long as I could get someone to pay for it. So, I pursued some things that were interesting to me, like finite-element research. I found that really cool, because then I could kind of craft exactly what I wanted to do and to see. And I found some really kind of neat things that I didn’t even know existed, like interface waves, or scattering into, you know, transmitted waves that I really just didn’t expect. So, that’s what I really enjoyed about it.

And I really enjoyed going out to sea. It’s terrifying. It’s terrifying to go out to sea. And in my later part of my research career, I was working with the AUV [autonomous underwater vehicle] group. So, we would have an AUV with a sonar mounted on it. We were interested in looking at tidal fronts and rivers. This was a fun experiment. However, every time that AUV left the boat, it was $3.5 million in the water that I was responsible for, so… exciting yet terrifying. But I really loved going out there, making things work, really being involved in doing something real and then bringing the data back and trying to understand that and then present it to others and getting the input back from the community. Because when you do that, you get the input back from the community, you learn so much more. Like, you can sit there and think, “Oh, I think I understand that.” But then you tell it to somebody else, and they bring some amazing insight. So, those are the things that… you know, experiments and understanding and collaboration.

Ballard:

Where do you see your field going in the next 5, 10 to 20 years?

Isakson:

I’m in a unique position right now, because I am a member of the decadal survey for ocean science for the NSF through the National Academies. I’m also on the Ocean Studies Board of the National Academies, and I am on the US Committee for the Ocean Decade for Sustainable Development. So, because of those positions, I’ve got to talk to people that are in all kinds of really interesting areas that have to do with the ocean, whether it’s the blue economy, for example, or whether it’s ocean biology or ecology, whether it’s ocean circulation modeling. That brings a lot of very interesting perspectives to ocean acoustics, which is my field.

I think that ocean acoustics is underutilized in ocean science and can be used to understand mechanisms that are affecting our world. For example, there’s a lot of concern about the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current, and whether or not that’s slowing down. Acoustics is like the prime modality to understand the ocean at large scales, because we can either make point measurements of temperature, salinity, we can make point measurements of ph and alkalinity, but if you want to look over a large area, EM radiation does not travel very far in the ocean. So, large tomographic acoustic experiments, I think, are going to really shed a lot of light on our changing oceans. And in support of that I see some very, very interesting new methodologies in acoustics that I think will take off. Some of these are smart cables where you have existing telecommunication cables that are instrumented with sensors that have pressure sensors, temperature, and salinity, but also can pick up acoustics and distributed acoustic sensing, which is also a kind of cabled way of looking at acoustics. But I’m excited to see acoustics being applied to ocean science more broadly, whether it’s in climate, whether it’s also in biology to understand benthic biology on the ocean floor, or pelagic biology, such as fish.

Ballard:

Did you stay in research?

Isakson:

I did not, so I will just explain that a little bit. And so in 2018, our executive director here at Applied Research Laboratories retired. And one of the technical labs—there are four technical labs here—that director took the Executive Director job. And I was walking through the hall one day, and I had worked with… it was a Signal Information Sciences Laboratory Director, and I just mentioned something to one of my coworkers because I had worked with that laboratory before, and they said, “Oh, you should apply.” And that kind of stuck with me for… I thought about it for a few weeks and decided, “Well, I’ll just kind of see what happens.” And so I threw in an application and I didn’t really think about it that much.

I didn’t get that job, but I did go through the entire application process, including a pretty extensive interview. And because of that, I learned a lot about the management of the lab and a lot of the stuff that you have to do behind the scenes to make the lab work. It wasn’t unlike when I was the Operations Officer in the battalion or running the shop in the army. A lot of the things that you have to do to make the battalion run or the shop run are the same things that you have to do to make the lab run, although there’s a big technical aspect to the lab that you don’t get in the army. So, after that decision, the Executive Director asked me if I would consider being a liaison from the Army Futures Command, which had just stood up in Austin. So, I did that, and at the same time, Task Force Ocean, which is an ONR research initiative, also was standing up. So, I served as a lead PI for the ARL effort. I did that for three years, along with some other duties, such as student coordinator and IRD [Internal Research and Development] Coordinator. And then, in 2021, the new director for the Signal Information Sciences Laboratory decided to retire, so I was asked by the executive director to apply for it again, which I did, and in 2022, in January, took over as Director here, for the Signal Information Sciences Laboratory. So, our laboratory is about a hundred people. My time to do research is very limited, but I still feel like an influence on the field as an acoustic liaison, for things like the National Academies board, and I still love to be involved with the ASA.

Ballard:

Was there anyone there that had an influence on you or your future?

Isakson:

I think that “there” is Applied Research Laboratory, and there are so many people it’s going to be really impossible to name. I’ve been here since… for 23 years. I mean, you, Megan. I love working with you. I think the work that you do is really important. I think it’s really interesting. So, I love hearing what you have to do and where you’re going. Other people that come to mind are… Colin Bown is a really good friend of mine who runs basically the AUV group here at Applied Research Laboratories—or actually, the technology that’s going into the AUV group. I think it’s called enabling capabilities over there. And then just everybody I work with every day, because there’s so many really smart people here that give me such great ideas. And then, lastly, Dr. Karl Fisher, who I report to now, who’s the Executive Director, really helped me a lot in figuring out how to be a lab director.

Ballard:

So, the next question is, are you still there?

Isakson:

I am.

Ballard:

Do you have any publications?

Isakson:

I do. I think I have like 26, or 27, and they’re mostly in JASA, but there’s a few IEEE in there and then some random ones from, you know, when I was at Brookhaven, and when I was in graduate school.

Ballard:

Can you tell me about your scientific service?

Isakson:

Yes, I’ve mentioned already that I’m working with the National Academies, so I won’t go over that much more. But I also served for the ASA on the AIP governing board, and for a short time on the Executive Council, and that was a really great experience. I think I spent seven years on the AIP governing board and a couple of… I mean, when you do stuff like that, you learn a lot. I learned a lot about publishing. I learned a lot about, you know, the thoughts that go into policies behind publishing through the National Academies and learned a lot about policies that affect ocean science. And then, lastly, I still do reviews. Paper reviews, I don’t do very many. I’m very selective of what I do, because I just don’t have a lot of extra time. But I really believe that just doing paper reviews—first of all, it’s a service to the community. But also it’s… I learn a lot. I learned like what it looks like on the other side. What makes a good paper. You know, what makes an impactful paper. I have to, you know, look up and actually learn the stuff that I’m reading, too. So, it expands my knowledge, too. I can’t say enough that, you know, if you do no other service, that being a reviewer is good for you, and important to the community.

Ballard:

What are you most excited about right now?

Isakson:

Well, I’m having fun on the Ocean Studies Board, so that I’m excited about. And I’m also excited about where my lab, Signal Information Sciences Lab, and then the larger Applied Research Laboratories, is going in the future. Because I think that we are an extremely impactful lab. I think that we have a significant impact on national security, and I think that will continue. And as all that landscape morphs with new technologies, such as the increase in AI/ML, for example, large language models, and just really the different ways that we think about information—I think that it’s going to be a really exciting future.

Ballard:

Moving on to family. What is your present marital status?

Isakson:

I am married.

Ballard:

What is your spouse’s name?

Isakson:

John Isakson.

Ballard:

What is your spouse’s occupation?

Isakson:

He’s a physical design engineer for Advanced Micro Devices.

Ballard:

When and where did you meet your spouse?

Isakson:

We met at West Point. He was originally my first line reporting person, so when I was a freshman he was a sophomore, and I reported directly to him. And nothing happened that year, because that is definitely not… that’s frowned upon at West Point. But after that year we became really good friends, so we would, like, stay up all night and talk till like 2 or 3 in the morning, just about whatever. And at some point, my friends told me, “You know, I think he likes you”, and I’m like, “I don’t think he likes me. We’re just friends.” Like, “No, I think he likes you.” Well, it turned out he did so. We actually… this is the next question, but I’ll answer anyway: we got married the day after I graduated at West Point.

Ballard:

You got married at West Point?

Isakson:

I did. Yes.

Ballard:

Oh wow!

Isakson:

Yeah, it was fun. Too bad it rained.

Ballard:

Do you have any children?

Isakson:

I do. I have two children, and I’ll go ahead and answer the next question, too. So, I have a daughter. Her name is Grace (Isakson) Murley. She’s currently going through an MD-PhD program. The medical part of that is through UT McGovern, and the PhD part of it is through MD Anderson Cancer Center. So, she is going to finish up her PhD in the spring, and then one more year of medical school. She’s focusing on MRI research for cancer imaging. She’s married and her husband is an asphalt engineer, and they have a house in Houston and two cats. And then my son, Nicholas Isakson, works for Raytheon in the Space and Surveillance section in Dallas, and he just got his clearance, which doesn’t mean… even though the family asked this question, that we can talk that stuff at home, because no, you, in fact, can’t. The rest of the family needs to get educated. But he’s a great guy and very fun to be with. He’s super interested in history, but he’s a software engineer.

Ballard:

Moving on to your personal interests, what is your favorite form of entertainment?

Isakson:

I still like to read, so I read all kinds of stuff. And I still run.

Ballard:

Can you name any of your favorite authors or books?

Isakson:

Yes, my favorite book, without any close contenders, is The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien. I think that that is fabulous, it’s just a masterpiece. And I like… Brandon Sanderson is something my daughter and I both enjoy. So, we read those books, and then we chat about them together.

Ballard:

You have any favorite movies or movie stars?

Isakson:

I thought they did a decent job on Lord of the Rings, so I’ll give them that. We also like Wes Anderson films. Movie stars… I’m not that great at recognizing movie stars. So, I guess not.

Ballard:

What is some of your favorite music? Singers and songs?

Isakson:

It’s a little embarrassing, but I really like pop music, and I kind of keep up with the genre. You know, I guess I was pulling into my driveway the other day, and my neighbor is, like, “Who is listening to this stuff?” And I’m like, “I’m sorry it’s your middle-aged neighbor listening to this stuff.” Recently, I’ve really enjoyed some Twenty-One Pilots. They’ve got a concept album out. That’s been really fun.

Ballard:

How about your favorite television programs?

Isakson:

Not a huge TV person. I’m not actually a huge movie person either. But my husband really likes reality shows. So that’s what we watch.

Ballard:

How about your favorite sports and teams?

Isakson:

I’m not a sports person.

Ballard:

Do you have any favorite arts or artists?

Isakson:

Not particularly, but I do like art, and I have an interest in it, and someday I’m going to retire and learn a whole lot more about it.

Ballard:

Do you have a favorite quote?

Isakson:

My favorite quote is… it’s not a famous quote, but when I was in the army, I reported to the executive officer of the battalion. His name was Gus Perna. He went on to become a four-star, by the way, I recently learned, and he was in charge of the Army Materiel Command, and he also ran Operation Warp Speed, which was to get the coronavirus vaccine out as fast as possible. He used to always say, and sign off with, “Dare to be great.” I think that that’s a great quote, and I still love it.

Ballard:

What are your hobbies today?

Isakson:

Still read, and I still run, just slower.

Ballard:

What are your future plans?

Isakson:

So, what’s great about being in this part of my career is I don’t have any. I just kind of take it every day at a time. I’m still having fun. And whatever comes, I hope someday to have some grandchildren, so that would be really wonderful. If it doesn’t, that’s okay, but that would be really wonderful. And someday, you know, just take a lot of time and travel with my husband.

Ballard:

There anything else that you would like to add?

Isakson:

I’m very grateful to the ASA for the opportunities that it afforded me and the friends that I’ve made through the ASA. And thank you so much, Megan, for conducting the interview, and I will say this is the second time that we conducted the interview. The first time was during covid, and I think that this is a much better interview. So, thank you so much.

Ballard:

Well, it’s my pleasure, and I love learning about you and the things you’ve done as well. So, thank you.

Isakson:

Alright, take care!