Under the auspices of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Institute, researchers from different disciplines and academic departments collaborate on research projects that involve combinations of their various interests. Below, GFDI associates are listed (in alphabetical order) along with their major areas of interest, links to recent projects, homepages, and other information.

Dr. Albert Barcilon

Professor of Meteorology
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: Theoretical and numerical problems in paradigm models focused on mechanisms of large-scale flows in the troposphere and in coupled atmosphere-ocean problems.
• Projects:
  • NSF proposal, "Further studies on the meteorology of West and Central Africa" with S. Nicholson (Met.) and others.
  • NSF proposal, "Breakdown of balance and the generation of inertia-gravity waves in upper tropospheric jets and fronts" with P. Cunningham (Met.).
  • Research on "Parametric instability as an energy pump for biennial oscillation of the ENSO dynamics system" with B. Wang & Z. Wang, U. of Manoa, Hawaii.

Dr. Steven Blumsack

Associate Professor of Mathematics
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: Dynamics of rotating fluids; flows over topography.
• Projects:
  • NSF proposal, "Florida Collaborative for Excellence in Teacher Preparation."

Dr. Mark Bourasssa

Assistant Professor of Meteorology
(homepage)

• Interests: Remote sensing of the ocean surface, modeling of the atmospheric and aqueous surface fluxes, and applications of air-sea interaction; the influence of sea state on fluxes, specifically the influences of surface water waves on the transfer of energy and momentum; merging in-situ and/or satellite observations into gridded surface winds and flux products, and scientific applications of these products.
• Projects:

Dr. George Buzyna

Professor & Assoc. Chair of Mechanical Engineering
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: Laboratory modeling of the physical processes which control large-scale weather and climate variability; Research on geophysical turbulence and energy transformation studies using laboratory and atmospheric data from extensive synoptic networks of temperature and velocity measurements.

Dr. Joseph Cain

Scholar/Scientist at GFDI
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: Sources of planetary magnetic fields, including core flow, ionospheric and magnetospheric currents, crustal anomalies, electrical induction from transient variations; Long term behavior of geomagnetic field; development of techniques to separate sources from satellite and surfac e magnetic observations; variations of atmospheric ozone prior to CFC effects; developing Internet resources to teach science.
• Projects:
  • NASA Proposal, "Reduction and Analysis of LEO Satellite Magnetic Field Data" with collaborators.
  • Mars Data Analysis Program Project to produce and interpret regional and near-global models and maps of the vector crustal magnetic field.

Dr. Malakondayya Challa

Computer Research Specialist
(email)

• Interests:Numerical studies of hurricane formation and intensification; the role of large-scale eddy momentum fluxes as a catalyst in enhancing or supressing hurricane growth; the dynamic importance of the African easterly jet on rainfall variation in equatorial Africa.

Dr. Amy Chan-Hilton

Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering
(homepage)

• Interests: Optimization of groundwater systems under uncertainty using evolutionary computation and artificial intelligence; groundwater flow and contaminant transport modeling; environmental systems analysis; contaminant fate and transport; traffic noise modeling; evolutionary computation/artificial intelligence methods for engineering problems.
• Projects:
  • NSF proposal "Adaptation of Groundwater Physical Models and Activities for Introduction to Environmental Engineering" to improve student interest and learning of environmental engineering, especially groundwater topics.

Dr. Ching Jen 'Marty' Chen

Professor and Dean of the College of Engineering
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: Laminar and turbulent convection; turbulence modeling; computational methods in fluid dynamics and heat transfer; modeling of turbulent flows; flow visualization; microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS) applications in bio-medical engineering; bio-magnetic fluid dynamics.

Dr. Allan Clarke

Professor of Oceanography
(homepage) (email)

• Interests:Coupled ocean-atmosphere climate dynamics; equatorial oceanography, long term sea level fluctuations; continental shelf and slope ocean dynamics.
• Projects:
  • NSF proposal, "Biennial Variability and the Spring Persistence Barrier in ENSO."

Dr. Carol Anne Clayson

Professor of Meteorology: Director, GFDI
(homepage) (email)

• Interests:atmosphere-ocean interaction, with an emphasis on boundary layer processes
• Projects:
  • research on determining air/sea fluxes from satellite data
  • other projects

Dr. Philip Cunningham

Professor of Meteorology
(homepage) (email)

• Interests:dynamic and synoptic meteorology and geophysical fluid dynamics, specifically with a view towards describing and understanding the structure and dynamics of synoptic-scale and mesoscale weather systems.
• Projects:
  • research focused on the development of a dynamical theory for upper-tropospheric jet streaks that is consistent with both observations and conceptual models.

Dr. William Dewar

Professor of Oceanography
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: Dynamics of the ocean at scales from 100 km to 10,000 km; global climate tendencies, especially effect of storage and transport of heat by the ocean.
• Projects:
  • NASA proposal, "Zonal Propagation of Nonlinear Oceanic Anomalies" with D. Nof.
  • NSF proposal, "Vortex Interactions with Abrupt Topography" with collaborators.

Dr. Sergio Fagherazzi

Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences
(homepage)

• Interests: Geomorphology, surface hydrology, coastal processes, numerical methods for earth sciences.
• Projects:

Dr. Jennifer Georgen

Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences
(homepage)

• Interests: Oceanic hotspots, their effects on geology & geochemistry and interactions with nearby mid-ocean ridges; oceanic plate boundary triple junctions with complex mantle upwelling patterns; creation of igneous provinces and oceanic plateaus; combined geological, geophysical & geochemical investigations such as studying helium isotopes in basalts dredged from the Southwest Indian Ridge; numerical modeling of mantle dynamics; seismic anisotropy and mantle flow; rare gas geochemistry.
• Projects:

Dr. Louis N. Howard

McKenzie Emeritus Professor of Mathematics
(homepage) (email or another)

• Interests:applied mathematics, fluid dynamics, partial differential equations, astrophysics and geophysics, biomedical mathematics.

Dr. Bill Hu

Associate Professor, Geological Sciences
( homepage) (email)

• Interests:Management and monitoring of groundwater resources under uncertainty; stochastic modeling of flow and transport in heterogeneous porous media; coupling laboratory and field experiments with stochastic modeling to study sorption processes in field, and optimal control of the water resources system; stochastic inverse mapping of hydraulic parameter distributions; modeling of groundwater and solute transport in Karst region.

Dr. Marcus Huettel

Professor, Oceanography
( homepage) (email)

• Interests:Ecology of marine macrobethos, biogeochemistry of marine sediments, transport process of the sea floor, reef ecology, benthic phototrophs, sediment microbiology, subtropical and tropical benthic biology, research method & modeling development.

Dr. Yousuff Hussaini

Professor, Computational Science & Information Technology
( homepage) (email)

• Interests: Fluid Mechanics, including instability, transition and turbulence, shock-turbulence interaction, combustion, acoustics; coupled ocean-atmosphere models simulation-based design; domain decomposition and parallel solution of partial differential equations; high-performance computing.

Dr. Fei-fei Jin

Professor of Meteorology
(homepage)

• Interests: Understanding dynamics of large-scale atmospheric and oceanic circulations; large-scale ocean-atmospheric interactions in the tropics and middle latitudes; dynamics of the climate system; theoretic and modeling studies of the low-frequency modes of the climate system such as ENSO, PDO, NAO and PNA.
• Projects:

Dr. Michael Kasha

Professor Emeritus of Chemistry
(homepage)

• Interests: Molecular spectoscopy research defining new excitation mechanisms with applications to biophysical phenomena; new types of fluorescence probes; photon-antenna, energy-trap model; solvent cage theory.
• Projects:

Dr. Ruby Krishnamurti

Professor of Oceanography
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: Theoretical and experimental studies of cellular convection; transition to turbulence; large scale order in turbulent flows; atmospheric cellular convection; large scale wind-driven ocean circulation.
• Projects:
  • NSF proposal, "Laboratory Determination of Salt-Fingering Fluxes of Heat, Salt, and Momentum."

Dr. T. N. Krishnamurti

Professor of Meteorology
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: high resolution hurricane forecasts (tracks, landfall, and intensity) monsoon forecasts on short,medium range and monthly time scale and studies of intra-seasonal and inter-annual variability of the tropical atmosphere.
• Projects:
  • Conference on FGGE, MONEX, and Numerical Weather Prediction.
  • Editing for Advances in Atmospheric Science, Atmospheric Science Texts, and Papers in Meteorology Research

Dr. Robin Kung

Scholar/Scientist/Engineer
(email)

• Interests: Laboratory modeling of large-scale geophysical flows; transition to turbulence in a themally-driven rotating flow; development of instrumentation and velocity measurements inlaboratory experiments.

Dr. David E. Loper

Professor of Geological Sciences and Mathematics; Affiliate Professor of Mechanical Engineering;
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: Theoretical and experimental studies of fluid flows with application to: Earth's outer core and mantle, flow and transport in karstic aquifers, and metallurgy.
• Projects:
  • Active within the Hydrogeology Consortium
  • NSF proposal, "CMG Research: Collaborative Research on Models of Sub-Grid Scale Turbulence in Earth's Core"
  • DEP proposal, "Transport of Pollutants in Ground Water"
  • NSF proposal, "Modeling of Heterogenious Aquifers."
  • NSF proposal, "Parameterization of Small-Scale Flow Structures in th Earth's Outer Core."

Dr. Ming Cai

Professor of Meteorology
(homepage) (email)

• Interests:
• Projects:

Dr. I. Michael Navon

Professor of Mathematics
(homepage) (email)

• Interests:optimal control of PDE's; 4-D Variational data assimilation; optimal parameter estimation; inverse problems; sensitivity analysis for fluid dynamics models & NMC and NASA NWP models; numerical linear algebra; parallel architectures for semi-implicit semi-Lagrangian models; new methods for constrained and unconstrained minimization; local and global large scale numerical optimization applied to magnetic laboratory research; numerical solution of elliptic parabolic and hyperbolic equations using adaptive mesh refinement finite-element methods in 2-D and 3-D.

Dr. Doron Nof

Professor of Oceanography
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: fluid movement within the ocean and its relationship to the forces acting on the oceanic system; oceanic processes in the vicinity of continents; behavior of large patches of anomalous water (eddies); flows through passages connecting oceans to one another; relationship between fluid flows and the Earth's climate.

Dr. James J. O'Brien

Professor of Meteorology and Oceanography; Director, COAPS
(one homepage and another) (email)

• Interests: modeling ocean circulation, coastal upwelling, equatorial ocean circulation, limited-area forecasting, fjords, etc.; seasonal circulation; theoretical modeling of El Niņo; coupling of fine and coarse mesh grids; ocean front modeling; fjord-ocean interaction; marginal ice zone modeling; internal modeling of India and Pacific Oceans.
• Projects:
  • Florida Commission on Hurricane Loss Projection Methodology

Dr. Richard L. Pfeffer

Rossby Professor of Meteorology
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: Computer and laboratory modeling of weather and climate variability; hurricane dynamics and prediction; probabilistic quantitative preciptiation forecasting (PQPF); data assimilation; studies of geostrophic turbulence.

Dr. Paul Reasor

Assistant Professor of Meteorology
(homepage)

• Interests: Dynamic meteorology; tropical cyclones (TCs); radar meteorology; TC genesis and intensity change, mid-latitude mesoscale convective vortex (MCV) longevity, and laboratory vortex resiliency.
• Projects:
  • Utilization of Doppler radar to document the 3D structure and time evolution of geophysical vortex winds.

Dr. Paul Ruscher

Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of Meteorology
(homepage)

• Interests: Synoptic and mesoscale meteorology, the planetary boundary layer, physical and applied climatology; diagnostic studies of microscale and mesoscale circulations in the boundary layer; modelling the planetary boundary layer; diagnosis and forecasting of weather regimes of the Pacific Northwest; Meteorological education; explosive cyclogenesis; improved forecasting of synoptic scale systems using numerical models.
• Projects:

Dr.Kevin Speer

Professor of Oceanography
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: general circulation of the oceans, especially thermohaline circulation, and flow forced by hydrothermal or geothermal sources.
• Projects:
  • direct observation of circulation in the eastern North Atlantic Ocean with subsurface floats

Dr. Melvin Stern

Professor of Oceanography
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: thermohaline convection; eddies and mesoscale dynamics in oceanography.
• Projects:
  • NSF proposal, "Three-Dimensional Structure and Flyux of Salt Fingers in an Unbounded gradient Region."

Dr. Louis St. Laurent

Assistant Professor of Oceanography
(homepage)

• Interests: Tides, waves, and turbulent mixing; modeling studies designed to investigate the impact of rough topography on the ocean circulation.
• Projects:

Dr. Xiaoming Wang

Professor of Math
( homepage) (email )

• Interests: Turbulence.

Dr. Georges Weatherly

Professor of Oceanography
(homepage) (email)

• Interests: Deep ocean circulation; continental shelf circulation; bottom boundary layer dynamics.
• Projects:
  • NSF proposal, "Analysis, Interpretation, and Synthesis of Data from the South Atlantic and the Equatorial Atlantic".
  • NSF proposal, "A Study of the Immediate Depth (900 m) and Surface Velocity Fields in the Gulf of Mexico Using Existing and Still Working PALACE Float Observations."

Dr. Xiolei Zou

Associate Professor of Meteorology
(homepage) (email)

• Interests:
• Projects:
  • NOAA proposal, "Assimilation of GPS/MET data for numerical weather prediction using NCEP global spectral model."
  • NASA proposal, "Retrieval, assimilation, and modeling of atmospheric water vapor from ground-based GPS networks: investigation of the global and regional hydrological cycles."
  • and several other proposals.