James Bellingham

Johns Hopkins University

Executive Director, Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy

Jim Bellingham is executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy in Baltimore, MD and the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Exploration Robotics. He holds primary appointments in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Whiting School of Engineering and the Asymmetric Operations Sector of the Applied Physics Laboratory, where he advances government and defense innovations for national security. For more than 30 years, Bellingham has been a global leader in the development of small, high-performance autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), resulting in a class of systems that are now widely used within the military, industry, and science communities. He has been instrumental in innovations for ocean observing and has spent considerable time at sea, leading two dozen AUV expeditions in locations across the Antarctic, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Eastern and South Pacific, and Arctic. Dr. Bellingham founded the Consortium for Marine Robotics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), founded the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Laboratory at MIT, and co-founded Bluefin Robotics (now owned by General Dynamics). He served as Director of Engineering and Chief Technologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). Jim serves on numerous advisory and National Academies studies, and chaired NRAC, the senior science advisory committee to the Secretary of the Navy. His awards include the Lockheed Martin Award for Ocean Science and Engineering, the MIT Fourteenth Robert Bruce Wallace lecturer, the Blue Innovation Rising Tides Award, and the Navy Superior Public Service Award. Jim is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Sessions With James Bellingham

Tuesday, 8 March

  • 01:30pm - 02:10pm (CST) / 08/mar/2022 07:30 pm - 08/mar/2022 08:10 pm

    Frontiers of AI: What's New at Johns Hopkins?
    Panel Digitalization/AI/Machine Learning/Robotics/Cybersecurity

    Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly moving from the laboratory to application and promises to permeate every aspect of society and commerce. Recognizing the transformational aspects of this field, Johns Hopkins is making major internal investments to build programs around the assurance of AI, fundamental AI technologies, and domain-specific application. Core AI technologies function largely as black boxes, creating substantial risks in deployment—how should organizations think about these risks and manage them? Given that existing AI is built largely on data, what lessons are there to be learned for societal applications of AI from activities such as the COVID Portal?

Wednesday, 9 March

  • 03:00pm - 03:30pm (CST) / 09/mar/2022 09:00 pm - 09/mar/2022 09:30 pm

    Robotics: Lessons from the Sea
    Digitalization/AI/Machine Learning/Robotics/Cybersecurity Carbon Management/Decarbonization

    Robotics is playing an increasingly important role in human enterprises in the ocean. Although out-of-sight from the average citizen, these activities impact our day-to-day lives, as the ocean is increasingly important as a source of energy, a source of mineral resources and as a nexus of climate impacts. How will these enterprises investing in ocean infrastructure for energy and telecommunications be shaped by rapidly advancing robotic capabilities? What can be learned from the science community’s sophisticated ocean observation systems-of-systems approaches leveraging distributed autonomous systems? What lessons do marine robotics offer for other technological efforts in harsh, energy and communications challenged environments?

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