Dr. Chris Verlinden has extensive military experience, drawing from a 14-year career as an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard. He has worked with the Office of Naval Research and Naval Research Laboratories extensively on projects ranging from seismic exploration to ocean acoustics and signal processing.

Specifically, Dr. Verlinden is a subject matter expert in the use of large vertical aperture arrays (LVAs), and making environmental inferences using passive and source-of-opportunity acoustic noise. He graduated from the Coast Guard Academy with High Honors with a degree in Marine and Environmental Sciences in 2008, whereupon he was stationed aboard the Coast Guard Icebreaker Polar Sea as the Science Officer for two years. Research missions while serving aboard Polar Sea ranged from methane hydrate research to capturing polar bears. In 2010, Dr. Verlinden transferred to USCGC Sycamore out of Cordova, Alaska where he served as Operations Officer for two years. During this time, Dr. Verlinden served as task force leader for on-scene Coast Guard assets during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and as project officer for oil spill response exercises in support of Operation Arctic Shield, earning five arctic service medals in the process.

Dr. Verlinden earned an M.S. in Oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2014 with research focused on passive ocean acoustics and the information content of ocean noise, and completed his Ph.D. in Applied Ocean Sciences at Scripps in 2017, with research focusing on passive acoustic source localization and environmental inversion. In 2014, Dr. Verlinden began teaching at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in the Marine Science section. Dr. Verlinden holds numerous professional certifications including commercial vessel captain’s licenses, FAA sUAS operator licenses, and Geospatial Technology certifications; he worked for both the USCG and OASIS before cofounding AOS in 2019.