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. ^ a b c d e f g Isakson, Marcia J. (Winter 2024), "In Life, Like Underwater Acoustics, Paths Are Seldom Straight" (PDF), Sound perspectives, Acoustics Today, 20 (4), doi:10.1121/AT.2024.20.4.42
  2. ^ a b c d e Isakson, Marcia Joyce (2002), The Effects of Alignment on the Dissociation of H2 on Pd(111) (PDF) (Ph.D. thesis), University of Texas at Austin, retrieved 2025-11-29; see vita, p. 80.
  3. ^ a b c d e "Marcia Isakson, PhD, 1992 Hertz Fellow", Hertz Fellows Directory, Hertz Foundation, retrieved 2025-11-29
  4. ^ a b c d e f g "Marcia Isakson", Faculty directory, University of Texas at Austin Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, retrieved 2025-11-29
  5. ^ Past and Present Officers and Members of the Executive Council, Acoustical Society of America, retrieved 2025-11-29
  6. ^ Fellows of the Society, Acoustical Society of America, retrieved 2025-11-29
  7. ^ "John Isakson", IEEE Xplore, IEEE, 28 October 2000, retrieved 2025-11-29
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