Bruce Howe awarded Fulbright fellowship to advance SMART cable effort

Submarine telecommunications cable span the globe and could host sensors—initially, temperature, pressure, seismic acceleration.

Bruce Howe, research professor in the SOEST Department of Ocean Resources and Engineering, was selected to receive a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar fellowship for 2022–23. The Fulbright Program is the world’s largest and most diverse international educational exchange program.

Howe will head to Portugal to expand submarine cable systems, which span the ocean, connecting billions of people by enabling the internet. He will work with leading scientists and engineers, the United Nations, government organizations and other stakeholders to integrate environmental sensing into these cable systems.

“Portugal is leading the SMART (Science Monitoring And Reliable Telecommunications) cable effort with the CAM ring system connecting the European Continent with the Azores and Madeira,” said Howe. “The Fulbright award will allow me to work closely with my hosts at the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and the Atmosphere and the University of Lisbon, helping to set up the surrounding science and early warning ecosystem for the CAM system in particular, while creating a template for others to be installed around the world.”

Portugal will be installing the first SMART cable system with environmental sensors in 2025. The system will address societal needs for better estimates and predictions of climate and sea level change, ocean circulation, and tsunami and earthquake risks.

Howe leads the UN ITU/WMO/UNESCO-IOC Joint Task Force SMART Subsea Cables as it works to implement SMART cables on the global scale.

Two other UH Mānoa faculty members were selected as Fulbright U.S. Scholars. Rajesh Jha, professor in the Department of Human Nutrition, Food, and Animal Sciences, will serve as a visiting professor at the University of Applied Sciences, Bingen, Germany.  Michel Mohr, professor in the Department of Religion, will teach and conduct research in the Department of Philosophy at National Taiwan University.

UH Mānoa was honored as one of 18 U.S. doctoral institutions that produced the most Fulbright U.S. Scholars in 2021–22. The honor also earned recognition from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 400,000 participants from more than 160 countries the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas, and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.

For more information about the Fulbright Program at UH Mānoa, visit this website.