Ocean Engineering

Ocean engineers apply scientific principles both to solve technological problems in the marine realm and to understand phenomena from hydrodynamics and fluid dynamics to marine biological systems. Several opportunities within IGPMS exist to apply various tools, including computational fluid dynamics and other sophisticated numerical simulation techniques to understand fluid flow from nanometers to kilometers. Current research in this area includes nanoscale fluidics as well as fluid dynamics and transport phenomena in geophysical, porous media, and multiphase flow fields. Areas of special interest include: gravity and turbidity currents, Hele-Shaw displacements, double-diffusive phenomena in particle-laden flows, and internal bores. Within the biological realm, opportunities exist to study mammalian circadian rhythms and synchronized population-scale phenomena like coral spawning using coupled and driven oscillator models.