my projects

Waves and eddies in the North Atlantic
Two chapters of my dissertation focuses on drifter data collected during NORSE (Northern Ocean Rapid Surface Evolution) cruises in the subpolar Arctic 2021-2023. In particular I’m looking at how the wind imparts energy to the ocean when there is background vorticity present, and I’m using surface drifters to do so. Through the use of a “Lagrangian slab model” (essentially Lagrangian momentum balances) I’ve found that the center of the eddy holds more kinetic energy than expected and that not all of it might be tied to the wind as we might have thought.

Internal waves and mixing in the Bay of Bengal
One chapter of my dissertation uses data I helped collect in the Bay of Bengal around the onset of the 2024 summer monsoon. I’m particularly interested in the internal wave environment and how that changed as tropical cyclone Remal moved through our sampling area. By using ADCP data from drifting profilers and gliders I’m looking into spatial coherence of wave, as well as the mixing environment in a stratified ocean using microstructure profiles.

Filaments and heat in the Gulf of Mexico
As part of the SUNRISE (Submesoscales Under Near-Resonant Inertial Shear Experiment) project I was part of a group of students who got to act as chief scientists for a couple of days. We devised a sampling plan to look at the subduction of a dense filament and wrote a paper about heat fluxes and frontal dynamics.

Physical-biological interactions near the St Lucia Escarpment
I’m part of an interdisciplinary group of students who were awarded ship time through the UC Ship Funds program to look into exceptional biodiversity near the Santa Lucia Escarpment in/near the newly established Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary. I’m in particular interested in the physical processes, such as enhanced mixing and internal tides associated with steep topography, that can contribute to increased primary productivity.

Course on Ocean Turbulence and Mixing
Mixing matters but it’s rarely taught in a holistic way, one that combines theory and practice. Together with a group of Scripps students I helped organize a three week summer course called COMCEPTS (Combined Ocean Mixing Course, Experiments and Practices for Turbulence Sampling) where we taught a dozen students from all over the West Coast all about ocean turbulence and mixing. We held lectures and then took everyone to sea for a week doing microstructure sampling with our MOD lab in-house built “epsi-profiler” sampling the Pt Loma Outfall wastewater plume among other things.