Milton Academy’s remotely operated underwater vehicle team (M.A.R.O.V.) earned 11th place overall in its 4th consecutive trip to the R.O.V. International Competition on June 23-25. The Internationals, held at the Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston, Texas, included 26 of the best teams from around the world.

Yoo-Na Kim ’07 controlled Milton’s underwater vehicle, Hallie, on the competition dives. During Hallie’s second descent, Yoo-Na, along with on-deck operators, Charles Johnson ’07, Tim Fram ’07 and Dan Abrams ’08, completed all required mission tasks successfully with several minutes to spare. As a result, their underwater dive score placed them in the “Top 10” among all other international teams in the competition.

Over the course of three days, Milton’s team took part in an engineering evaluation and assessment. This evaluation included a 45-minute interview of the team members by a panel of technical judges. The team was also evaluated on their poster presentation and their written, technical report.

Sam Minkoff ’06, Charles Johnson ’07, Dan Abrams ’08, Marie Lea Berkowitz ‘07, Yoo-Na Kim ’07, Chae Yeong Yoo ’07, Hee-Seung Yang ’07, Tim Fram ’07, Austin Cheng ’07, Nop Jiarathanakul ’08, Alice Tin ’06, Stephen Suh ’08, Paul Hopkins (M.A. Staff-Security), and John Hayden ’08 were the core members of this year’s M.A.R.O.V. team.

Corporate sponsors for this year’s competitions included M.I.T’s Department of Ocean Engineering, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (M.B.A.R.I.), N.O.A.A.’s National Marine Sanctuary Program, the Office of Naval Research (O.N.R.), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (W.H.O.I.), Scripps Institute of Oceanography, the Stellwagen Bank Marine Sanctuary, the New England section of the Marine Technology Society (M.T.S.) and M.A.T.E.