Fran Rowe, Technical Advisor of Rowe Technologies, recently received the Lockheed Martin Award for Ocean Science and Engineering at the Oceans 2014 MTS/IEEE conference in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.
The Lockheed Martin sponsored award is presented to an individual who has demonstrated the highest degree of technical accomplishment in the field of marine science, engineering or technology.
In 1982, Fran Rowe partnered with Kent Deines and founded RD Instruments in San Diego, California. The result of this work introduced the industry’s first Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) capable of measuring current profiles to extended ranges.
This was followed shortly after by the development of the first commercial Doppler Velocity Log (DVL), used for precision underwater navigation. These revolutionary devices are now everyday tools for numerous scientific and engineering application areas including hydrology, oceanography, environmental, oil and gas, directional wave measurements, and underwater navigation applications.
The end result is a multi-million dollar industry consisting of several different companies (SonTek, Nortek, Link Quest, as well as his current venture, Rowe Technologies) all originating from Fran’s initial partnership.
Poway, California-based Rowe Technologies designs, develops, and manufactures acoustic Doppler current profilers for applications in oceans, lakes and rivers (http://rowetechinc.com/).
Teledyne RD Instruments (TRDI) is part of Teledyne Technologies Inc.