About me

I research the Earth’s ocean, its physics and motion, and its entangled eddies, turbulence, currents, and waves. I do a lot of math and write code that runs on supercomputers. In the distant past, I went to sea. I love to learn and to teach, to think about past and future, and to run, climb, ski, and explore the landscapes of Earth.

Long ago, I grew up in a Boston suburb. Later, I studied Aerospace Engineering, combustion, space propulsion, and wind energy at the University of Michigan before moving to San Diego to pursue a PhD at UCSD in 2010. I worked with Eric Lauga and Bill Young on bugs and waves until receiving a PhD for a dissertation titled On the coupled evolution of oceanic internal waves and quasi-geostrophic flow in May 2016. Along the way, I fell in love with running, climbing, backcountry skiing, and surfing. I moved to Boston in 2017 for a postdoc with Raf Ferrari at MIT funded by a NOAA fellowship, before joining the Climate Modeling Alliance as an MIT research scientist in 2019. In 2020, Leah and I climbed our first multipitch route together.

An abbreviated curriculum vitae (pdf)

Jobs

• since 2019: Research Scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 2016–2018: Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 2014–2016: Teaching Assistant and Graduate Research Assistant, University of California, San Diego
• 2009–2010: Research Engineer, Accio Energy

Education

• PhD, University of California, San Diego (2016)
• MSE, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2010)
• BSE, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Magna Cum Laude (2009)
• Wellesley High School (2005)

Awards

• NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship (2016–2018)
• Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, Dept of Mech and Aero Engineering, UCSD (Spring 2016)
• Focht-Powell Graduate Fellowship, UCSD (2010–2013)