Mentor: Baylor Fox-Kemper (Brown University)

Project Location

Brown University

Project Description

The Fox-Kemper Research group at Brown University is working with URI scientists to model the Narragansett Bay to Block Island Sound, Martha’s Vineyard, Fishers Island and up into the estuaries of the Providence River. The goal of their research is to create the OSOM (Ocean State Ocean Model), a computer model which takes into account all parts of the bay to show the past and present of how the bay is changing. A key task is evaluating the behavior of the OSOM versus observations and finding observations that can be used to initialize OSOM forecasts. The overarching goal is for the OSOM to be able to accurately predict changes in climate of the bay over years and decades and weather changes up to 2 weeks in the future. Scientists working for Baylor and other research groups have analyzed variables from buoys, in situ measurements, drones, and satellites including salinity, water density, water pressure, chlorophyll, bacteria growth, algae bloom frequency, spectral reflectance and wave velocity fields in order to help model the Narragansett Bay and the inner coastal shelf. Most of these projects have led to visualization extensions in collaboration with Brown’s CCV and the Nature Lab at RISD.

This project involves:

• field work
• computational work

Available for SURF Flex?

Yes

Required/preferred skills

Programming in Matlab or Python and a basic understanding of statistics are very helpful. Experience flying drones welcome. Experience with cloud computing or data sciences are a major plus!

Transportation needs

Students should plan to visit Brown regularly and other sites around RI if collecting data. All group and individual meetings are hybrid, so accommodations for virtual participation are built in, but past experience has shown that some in person connecti

2022