Dr. Paul Chamberlain recently defended his PhD thesis “Semi-Lagrangian Float Motion and Observing System Design” at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO).  Paul has studied and predicted where floats will go when they are underwater and the best locations to deploy floats to learn about the ocean.

Currently Paul is working as a postdoctoral researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography with Matthew Mazloff in support of the NASA-funded Hypernav project. A frontier in semi-Lagrangian float prediction is to operationalize the intuitions gained from dynamical models and remotely pilot floats by adjusting their drift depth and surfacing intervals – similar to how hot air balloon pilots navigate their craft. This has never been done in the ocean and Paul is excited to get to work.

Dr. Rosalind Echols recently graduated from the University of Washington after defending her PhD thesis “The impact of freshwater and phytoplankton on mixed layer heating”; advisor Steve Riser.

Rosalind is currently a postdoc scholar with the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fisheries Science in collaboration with the Northwest Maritime Center and the new Maritime High School to support teachers in designing marine science projects. Over the summer, her team designed a project related to shellfish aquaculture, drawing on the expertise of UW researchers and local industry experts and are planning many other projects to teach students about the ocean, maritime industry, and connections with their everyday life.

Dr. Channing Prend recently graduated from Scripps Institution of Oceanography after defending his PhD thesis “Physical controls on Southern Ocean biogeochemistry“; advisors Lynne Talley and Sarah Gille. Channing was awarded the Jean Fort Dissertation Prize for doctoral research that met the highest standards of academic excellence that may make a significant contribution to an issue of humanitarian or public concern.

Channing is currently a NOAA Climate & Global Change postdoctoral fellow working with Georgy Manucharyan at University of Washington and Andy Thompson at California Institute of Technology. His postdoctoral research examines regional variability of submesoscale ice-ocean coupling in Southern Ocean marginal ice zones using high-resolution model output, satellite data, and in situ measurements from instrumented elephant seals.