Dr. Steve Elgar
Senior Scientist
Applied Ocean Physics & Engineering Department
Contact Information:
Work: 508-289-3614
elgar@whoi.edu
Bigelow 206
Mailing Address:
266 Woods Hole Road, MS #11
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole, MA 02543
Research Interests
Observations and models of nearshore processes, including wave evolution across the continental shelf to the shoreline, the corresponding breaking-wave-driven circulation, and the subsequent changes to surfzone morphology (e.g., beach erosion and accretion). Analysis of nonlinear random processes, especially geophysical time series.
Graduate Students
- Thomas Berge MS 1988 DSP Workstations
- Gloria Sebert MS 1989 Statistics of bicoherence and biphase
- Vinod Chandran PhD 1990 2-D Bispectral analysis
- Mary Ann Ferriole MS 1990 Dissipation in the surf zone
- Zhenhua Liu PhD 1993 Wave group statistics
- Barry Vanhoff PhD 1996 Simulation of nonlinear ocean waves
- Edie Gallagher PhD 1996 (co-chair Guza) Observations of sand bar evolution on a natural beach
- Anton Schoenbacher MS 1997 Wave refraction/diffraction GUI
- Fernanda Hoefel PhD 2003 Wave-induced sediment transport and morphological change
- Jim Thomson PhD 2006 Infragravity waves
- Mara Orescanin, PhD 2015, Processes near an inlet mouth
- Melissa Moulton, PhD 2016, Perturbations to the surfzone seafloor
- Julia Hopkins, PhD 2017, Shoreline morphological evolution
- Ciara Dooley (started Fall 2019), The nearshore mesoscale
Postdoctoral Researchers
- John Schneider (1990-1992)
- Vinod Chandran (1990-1993)
- Zhenhua Liu (1994)
- Barry Vanhoff (1996-1997)
- Tom Hsu (2003-2004)
- Jim Thomson (2006)
- David Clark (2011-2013)
- Erika Johnson (2017)
- Julia Hopkins (2017)
- Enrique Padilla (2021-2022)
- Paige Hovenga (2021-2022)
- Drude Christensen (2021-present)
- Marie-Pierre Delisle (2023-present)
- Reza Salatin (2023-present)
Navy students (co-advised with Britt Raubenheimer):
- Charles Murman (2022-2024)
- Seth Ammons (2022-2024)
- Austin Faddish (2022-2024)
Education
B.S. University of Idaho, 1980, Civil Engineering & Mathematics
M.S. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 1981, Oceanography
Ph.D. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 1985, Oceanography
Awards
- Excellence in refereeing for JGR Oceans
- National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellow
- Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow
- W. van Allen Clark Chair for Excellence in Oceanography
Affiliations
- Research Associate, Scripps Institution of Oceanography