Patrick Cross (PhD, Meteorology, Naval Postgraduate School), completed a 20-year Naval officer career in submarines and meteorology/oceanography in 2006, culminating in a tour as Force Oceanographer for the Pacific submarine force based at Pearl Harbor.  For the next several years, he worked with a small company managing Navy-funded research projects related to underwater acoustics, including the use of autonomous vehicles and advanced signal processing.

Cross joined HNEI in the summer of 2013, initially to manage proposal efforts related to the management of the Navy’s Wave Energy Test Site (WETS) off Marine Corps Base Hawai‘i, in Kāne‘ohe. He is serving as program manager for the WETS support program and has expanded it to include HNEI-led research projects on wave energy conversion methodologies of relevance to Navy applications. Additionally, he now directs research, outreach, infrastructure enhancement, and strategy development for the Hawai‘i Marine Energy Center (HMEC) – a Department of Energy designation as one of four such centers nationally. As a research group within HNEI, HMEC seeks to explore and expand marine energy solutions for Hawai‘i and for the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Cross also serves as Cooperating Graduate Faculty in the Ocean and Resources Engineering Department and has guided numerous students working on research of relevance to marine energy.