Jonathan D. Elkin (ME-BS '03, ME/Ocean Engineering-MEng '07) presented a paper based on his graduate thesis at the Northern California Meeting of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineering (SNAME) on February 20, 2008. His paper, entitled "Hydrodynamic Peculiarities of Catamaran-Like Hull Sections," was selected to receive the national 2008 SNAME Graduate Paper Honor Prize at the October Annual SNAME Meeting in Houston, TX.

Jonathan worked in the Computational Marine Mechanics Laboratory (CMML) of Professor R. W. Yeung (Fluid Mechanics and Ocean Engineering). His work examined the swaying and rolling (anti-symmetric) resonance fluid properties between a pair of twin rectangular cylinders and explored the resultant hydrodynamic peculiarities. Such peculiarites include the existence of persistent body and fluid oscillations with little excitation, the enormous "moonpool" wave amplitudes, and oscillating bodies that would not generate any waves. His predecessor Robert Seah examined the heaving (symmetric) properties of such twin bodies.

Jonathan was the 2005-06 Vice President of the student engineering society, Cal-SNAME, and is the current vice president of the Northern California section of SNAME.

As a personal note: fulfilling a dream profession of his childhood, Elkin captains, in the San Francisco Bay, for the Blue and Gold Ferry, and the Angel-Island - Tiburon Ferry, the latter on catamaran hulls, including the newest "zero-emission" ferry Gemini (pictured here at left), just delivered to the Bay Area's Water Transport Authority. He has also joined the engineering staff of Jeppesen Marines in Alameda, an internationally well-known entity for ship-routing optimzation. Jonathan received an award certificate and a cash prize of $500 from SNAME.