Dr. John R. Potter

Dr. John R. Potter earned a Joint Honours Maths and Physics BSc. from Bristol and a PhD. in Glaciology and Oceanography from Cambridge studying the Antarctic ice mass balance, where he spent four consecutive summers. He was awarded the Polar Medal for this work by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988. Dr. Potter worked in Italy on propagation fluctuations in underwater acoustics from 1986-1991, found and married his lifetime soulmate then sailed across the Atlantic and through the Panama Canal to San Diego where he worked at Scripps Institution of Oceanography on Ambient Noise Imaging and marine mammal acoustics. In 1995 Dr. Potter sailed (with his growing family) on to Singapore where he founded the Acoustic Research Laboratory (ARL) and co-founded the Tropical Marine Science Institute (TMSI) in NUS. John headed the ARL and was an Associate Director of the TMSI for 12 years, working on passive acoustic imaging, marine mammal acoustics, autonomous sensing and underwater communications networking. In 2004 he took a year’s ‘seabbatical’ with his family to circumnavigate the Indian Ocean by sailboat on a sponsored voyage of research, public outreach, and education. In 2007 he returned to Italy, first as a consultant and then as project leader at the CMRE on communication networking. He then served as the Principle Strategic Development Officer at CMRE, before leaving in 2018 to work on his boat, following which he took up a full Professorship at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway where he now works on marine mammals and Distributed Acoustic Sensing over Fibre Optic cables.

Dr. Potter is a Fellow of the IEEE and MTS, IEEE OES Distinguished Lecturer, Associate Editor for the IEEE JOE, PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer and an International Fellow of the Explorer’s Club, among other things. It is no longer true that he neither owns nor operates a television.