News: An article featuring my research from the MIT News Office can be found here.

Research interests: My research focuses on the fluid dynamics of the ocean. I am particularly interested in ocean turbulence and mixing, ocean fronts and the surface boundary layer, and the impact of turbulence on micro-organisms. Recent work has uncovered a fascinating and poorly-understood collection of processes occurring at relatively small scales (<O(10km)) where the vertical motion is strong but stratification and the Earth's rotation are important factors. Since these motions are too small to be directly resolved by global ocean and climate models, understanding their impact on the structure and dynamics of the ocean is one of the most pressing topics in physical oceanography. Currently, I am studying upper ocean fronts and their impact on boundary layer turbulence, the role of physics in triggering phytoplankton blooms, the impact of turbulence on swimming bacteria, and mixing driven by breaking internal waves. My work primarily uses computational methods to address these questions.