My name is Rithu Manoharan and I’m a junior in Electrical Engineering who’s planning to specialize in either digital signal processing or electronic communications. I’m I’m interested in applying my skills to scientific exploration applications. I’m currently involved with the Aeronautics and Astronautics CubeSat team, occasionally write film reviews for the UW film club, and will be an engineering peer educator in the fall. I’m participating in this cruise because I want to experience the environment of a scientific exploration expedition and learn about the technologies that make it possible. I would also like to create something that helps students who are new to Oceanography (like me) learn more about the cruise and get excited about it! While reading through blogs and data from past cruises, I realized just how unique and great an opportunity to visit the site of an underwater volcano and work with a lot of brilliant scientists and students was; I’m very excited to have the opportunity to sail with the Thompson this summer!