About Us
The ARL is a laboratory within the Tropical Marine Science Institute (TMSI) of the National University of Singapore (NUS). Originally founded in 1996 by John Potter as part of the physics department, the multidisciplinary laboratory later moved to the Engineering faculty, and eventually found its home in TMSI.
We are a team of international researchers in Singapore striving towards research excellence in shallow-water acoustics and underwater technologies.
For marine operations, acoustics is the natural tool for use underwater as sound can travel over several kilometers whereas other forms of energy are useful only at very short ranges. With this in mind, we concentrated on underwater acoustics research in the initial years. However, as we see the future of marine sensing in networked autonomous assets, we also conduct research in the areas of networked autonomous systems.
The ARL is a somewhat unconventional research environment for NUS, in that we do very little undergraduate teaching, being 100% funded by research grants. We are success and goal oriented, rather than task and process oriented. We strive to empower researchers with a high degree of autonomy and an environment that nurtures creativity and innovation.