People
The Float Group at WHOI is made up of a variety of scientists and engineers. Meet our talented team:
Principal Investigators:
Dr. Steven Jayne
Senior Scientist
Dr. Jayne’s research interests include understanding and modeling the ocean’s dynamics and its role in the Earth’s climate; collecting and synthesizing the diverse set of global ocean observations to map and understand the ocean’s general circulation; studying the special role of western boundary currents in the general circulation and eddy-mean flow interactions within them; investigating air-sea interaction in tropical cyclones; and improving physical parameterizations in ocean circulation models.
Contact: sjayne@whoi.edu
WHOI profile: Steven Jayne
Dr. Breck Owens
Emeritus Research Scholar
Dr. Owens is the Director of the international Argo program. His research focuses on the description of the general circulation and eddy variability in the world’s oceans; sea ice, ocean- atmosphere coupling dynamics; development of float technology and autonomous vehicles for ocean monitoring.
Contact: bowens@whoi.edu
WHOI profile: Breck Owens
Dr. Pelle Robbins
Research Specialist
Dr. Robbins has been coordinating the operations of the WHOI Argo effort for many years, as well as overseeing the quality control of the project's data stream. She has a background in large-scale ocean and biogeochemical processes.
Contact: probbins@whoi.edu
WHOI profile: Pelle Robbins
Dr. Susan Wijffels
Senior Scientist
Susan aims to quantify and understand the role of the ocean in climate, key aspects of the large-scale ocean circulation and global ocean change. She also is recognised for her contributions to the design, implementation and exploitation of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS). Susan received a B.Sc. Hons (First Class) from the Flinders University of South Australia, in 1986, and a PhD in 1993 from the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography and Oceanographic Engineering. She was with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Marine Laboratory in Australia from 1994, becoming a principle senior researcher, before joining WHOI in July 2017.
Susan’s work at WHOI focuses on her long term interests in the variability of the Indonesian Throughflow and its role in climate, the global Argo project and the evolution of its design (she is co-chair of the International Argo Steering Team), quantifying global ocean change over the past 50 years, including the anatomy and drivers of ocean warming, how changes in the earth’s hydrological cycle are expressed in large scale changes to the ocean salinity field and if and how climate models exhibit these behaviours.
Contact: swijffels@whoi.edu
WHOI profile: Susan Wijffels
Other scientists and engineers:
Benjamin Greenwood
Engineer II
Benjamin Greenwood is an Engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Ben assists the Float Group by maintaining software which retrieves telemetered Argo messages, decodes the compressed binary messages, and distributes the raw data to DACs and other collaborators in real-time. His research projects include remote sensor telemetry, embedded systems, and dynamic website design.
Contact: bgreenwood@whoi.edu
WHOI profile: Benjamin Greenwood
Cora Hersh
MIT/WHOI Joint Program Graduate Student
After earning her B.S. in physics at Haverford College, Cora completed a post-baccalaureate science communications fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. She worked with the Float Group as a research assistant for a year, supporting communications activities, developing Argo data visualizations, and evaluating the quality of the Argo dataset. Now a student in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program, she is advised by both Dr. Susan Wijffels and Dr. Jake Gebbie.
Contact: chersh@whoi.edu
WHOI profile: Cora Hersh
Deb West-Mack
Research Associate III
Processing and quality control of Argo float data. Automation of hydrographic data processing and data visualization.
Contact: dwest@whoi.edu
WHOI profile: Deb West-Mack
