The REEF program came together after Rob Nicholson, innovation program lead for the Delaware Department of Technology and Information, met Dr. It include the Ratcliffe Eco-Entrepreneurship Fellows (REEF) program, which brings Horn Entrepreneruship to UD’s coastal campus to develop entrepreneurs who seek to create businesses, commercialize discoveries and develop new products that will solve environmental problems or improve sustainability. This area of innovation is now expanding at UD’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment in Lewes. The boats, each of which cost about $2.5 million, were received through a partnership with Austin-based marine robotics company Ocean Infinity in 2018.
UD’s fleet of four ASVs may sound small, but it’s one of the largest - of not the largest - ASV fleet at a university. You might remember that, in January 2021, an unmanned tugboat sank in the Delaware Bay and was quickly located using two of the University of Delaware’s autonomous surface vessels (ASVs), also known as “robot boats.” It was the first “real world” mission for UD’s ASVs. There is, however, another growing tech industry that is putting SusCo on the innovation map: blue tech, or ocean technology - specifically, ocean robotics. When you think of tech and rural-coastal Sussex County, you might think of agtech, or agricultural technology, which quitely thrives on many of Delaware’s commercial and family-owned farms.