Biography:Marcia Isakson
Marcia Joyce Isakson (born 1970, née Geiger, also published as Marcia J. Geiger)[1][2] is an American physicist who directs the Signal and Information Sciences Laboratory of the Applied Research Laboratories at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a former president of the Acoustical Society of America,[3] and holds an affiliate faculty position as a lecturer in the university's Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering.[4] Her research concerns modeling and understanding the behavior of sonar in shallow ocean water, with applications in mapping tidal regions[3] and in national defense.[3]
Education and career
Isakson is originally from Hereford, Texas, but moved twice as a teenager to Chicago and Connecticut,[1] where she attended New Milford High School.[2] She graduated from the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York in 1992, with a bachelor's degree in engineering physics and mathematics,[4] including an internship at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.[1] After a 1994 master's degree in physics from the University of Texas at Austin, as a Hertz Foundation Fellow,[4] and ordnance officer training at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds,[2] she became a battalion operations officer in the United States Army from 1994 to 1997,[4] serving as a captain at Fort Hood.[3] Returning to the University of Texas for continued graduate study in physics, she completed her Ph.D. in 2002.[4] Her dissertation, The Effects of Alignment on the Dissociation of H2 on Pd(111), was advised by Greg Sitz.[2]
She joined the Applied Research Laboratories of the University of Texas at Austin in 2001.[4] There, she began her work in underwater acoustics, despite her previous physics research being entirely focused on lasers, electromagnetic radiation,[1] and "the dynamics of gas- surface reactions".[2] She also holds a lecturer position in mechanical engineering at the university,[4] and taught underwater acoustics there beginning in 2009.[3]
She became president of the Acoustical Society of America for the 2017–2018 term.[5] This led her to shift her work at the Applied Research Laboratories from research to management, and in 2021 she became director of the Signal and Information Sciences Laboratory.[1]
Recognition
Isakson was elected as a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America in 2013, "for contributions to modeling shallow water acoustic propagation using the finite element method".[6]
Personal life
Isakson is married to John Isakson,[1] an electronics engineer and former artillery officer.[7] They have two children, medical imaging researcher Grace Isakson-Murley and defense software engineering contractor Nicholas Isakson.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Isakson, Marcia J. (Winter 2024), "In Life, Like Underwater Acoustics, Paths Are Seldom Straight", Acoustics Today 20 (4), doi:10.1121/AT.2024.20.4.42, https://acousticstoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/sound-underwater-isakson.pdf
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Isakson, Marcia Joyce (2002), The Effects of Alignment on the Dissociation of H2 on Pd(111), University of Texas at Austin, https://web2.ph.utexas.edu/~gositz/IsaksonThesis.pdf, retrieved 2025-11-29; see vita, p. 80.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "Marcia Isakson, PhD, 1992 Hertz Fellow", Hertz Fellows Directory (Hertz Foundation), https://www.hertzfoundation.org/people/marcia-isakson/, retrieved 2025-11-29
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 "Marcia Isakson", Faculty directory (University of Texas at Austin Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering), https://www.me.utexas.edu/people/faculty-directory/isakson, retrieved 2025-11-29
- ↑ Past and Present Officers and Members of the Executive Council, Acoustical Society of America, https://acousticalsociety.org/past-and-present-officers-and-members-of-the-executive-council/, retrieved 2025-11-29
- ↑ Fellows of the Society, Acoustical Society of America, https://acousticalsociety.org/fellows-of-the-society/, retrieved 2025-11-29
- ↑ "John Isakson", IEEE Xplore (IEEE), October 28, 2000, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37085510246, retrieved 2025-11-29
External links
- Marcia Isakson publications indexed by Google Scholar
- Oral History Interview with Marcia Isakson conducted by Megan Ballard on August 16, 2024, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics
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