Dr. Teresa Ryan: For Her, It’s Personal

In the last five years, Dr. Teresa Ryan’s life has been as dynamic as the ever-changing coast she calls home. Ryan (pictured below), who first joined the ECU Department of Engineering in 2013, moved to Kill Devil Hills in 2021 to serve as a key connector between ECU’s Greenville and Outer Banks campuses and to act as a bridge between the Department of Engineering and the Coastal Studies Institute. She saw it as the perfect place for her ongoing research which, impressively, has been continuously funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) since 2015.

Over the years, Ryan, who leads the Acoustics and Vibrations Lab, has investigated how environmental conditions, like sea state, temperature, wind, and humidity, affect sound transmission over water. This research provides further insight into how someone on shore might perceive a distant noise source such as a boat or a busy highway, given the conditions at the time.  In addition to gaining a better understanding queries like this, Ryan has also successfully provided engaging opportunities for her students to pair their knowledge with hands-on experiences through summer field intensives.

Ryan, her colleagues, and students, have helped fine-tune acoustic models with the data they collected, yet they also discovered a slight hiccup in the process. As it turns out, there is an unpredictable variability to turbulence that can’t be explained with current technology and tools. So, with her newest ONR grant, which runs through 2027, Ryan isn’t investigating just the weather’s influence on sound propagation now. She’s also considering how water can mask sounds further.

In other words, “A lot of noise comes from the water itself- choppy conditions, crashing waves along varying shorelines. Our next task is to understand how these combined acoustics might actually hide the sounds of noise sources much further away,” says Ryan.

Not only has Ryan’s primary research question transformed in recent years, but so has her role at ECU. Since maintaining a presence on the ECU Outer Banks Campus, Ryan has been promoted from associate professor to professor and also currently serves as Chair of the Engineering Department at ECU. While she wears many hats and her day-to-day duties have shifted, her passion to mentor students and provide personalized attention does not waver.

While Ryan acknowledges that higher education institutions are generally facing challenges, she is excited by the fact that the return on investment for an engineering degree is still high, and thus compelling to students. As Chair, she has made it her mission to bring awareness to the Department of Engineering at ECU through several outlets, including, what she calls, a “grassroots marketing and outreach” organization led by ECU engineering students. Not only are the students highlighting what they love about the engineering program at ECU, but they are also engaging with the community through K-12 programming and other fun, public-friendly initiatives. True to ECU’s mission, the Department of Engineering is facilitating regional transformation.

As for Ryan, working in the Department of Engineering pleases her because it also feels personal. She sees a big, sprawling, fun campus in Greenville, but nestled within is the engineering department, which can provide small class sizes and individualized attention. This hidden-in-plain-sight, close-knit community of faculty and students foster a family atmosphere, which Ryan believes is the “secret sauce” to their success.

Given the similar feel of the ECU Outer Banks Campus, it is no wonder why she feels so at home in both locations. Though life looks different than it did five years ago, Ryan remains a bridge between campuses and optimistic about future collaborations amongst faculty in both places and for her students.

The preceding story first appeared in the Winter 2026 edition of CoastLines, published in January.