Dr. Sarah N Giddings
Associate Professor
Dr. Giddings started as an Assistant Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in January 2014 in the Integrated Oceanography Division. She has built her Environmental Fluids and Coastal Oceanography Laboratory including a wonderful research team and established research projects locally in Southern CA and beyond. Additional information on Dr. Giddings including a current CV, publications, education & training, and teaching & outreach experience can be found here. A fun interview and video highlighting the Giddings’ lab work was published by SIO in early 2016!
Helen Zhang
PhD student
Niv Anidjar
Niv is a PhD Student who joined the lab in the summer of 2022 following Niv’s first year of study in the physical oceanography curricular group. Niv’s intradisciplinary interests include ocean-estuary exchange, coastal and estuarine biophysical interactions, and estuarine morphodynamics. Niv is also interested in the oceanographic and scientific pedagogy, as well as the social, economic, and political context of oceanographic research and institutions. Niv received a B.Sc. in atmospheric and oceanic sciences from UCSD in 2019.
Duncan Wheeler
PhD student
Duncan Wheeler is a PhD candidate at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who joined the lab in summer 2019 after completing his first year of studies. Duncan is interested in interdisciplinary research that bridges the social and physical sciences to identify how fundamental physical research can be done in a way that most effectively benefits society. For his thesis, he is first looking at the ways in which large infragravity frequency waves can impact shallow estuaries, mainly through turbulent mixing and its resulting effects on salinity, temperature, and oxygen. Second, he is examining cultural conflicts that arise in academia and how they affect researchers through interviews asking academics about various expectations. Previously Duncan received a Bachelor of Science in Physics from MIT, where he worked on optics research with applications to photovoltaics.
Lauren Kim
PhD student
Lauren is currently a PhD student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and is co-advised by Sarah Giddings and Mark Merrifield. Broadly, she is interested in coastal ocean processes and their interactions with land. Her first chapter focuses on the morphodynamic responses of a dune-backed beach during high-energy storm conditions in the Outer Banks, NC. Originally from Los Angeles, she received her BS in physics with a minor in physiology from Cal Poly, Pomona in 2017. In fall of 2017, she began the physical oceanography program at Scripps and received her MS in oceanography in 2019.
Dr. Elizabeth Brasseale
postdoctoral researcher
Elizabeth Brasseale joined the Giddings lab as a postdoctoral scholar in September 2020. She models water quality as a function of pollutant decay and sinking using regional ocean models as part of the U.S. Coastal Research Program. Previously, Elizabeth studied estuarine-shelf interactions and larval transport of marine invasive species in the Pacific northwest during her doctoral studies at the University of Washington, advised by Parker MacCready.
Dr. Alex Simpson
postdoctoral researcher
Dr. Simpson joined the Giddings lab as a postdoctoral scholar in February 2022. Alex is investigating how small river plumes interact with the surf zone through a field campaign at Los Penasquitos Lagoon. Previously, Alex's focus was remote sensing of nearshore features using drones and X-Band radar, with topics ranging from frontal shear instabilities to internal wave transformation. They completed their PhD with Dr. Merrick Haller at Oregon State University in December 2021.
former lab members
Dr. Emily Lemagie
postdoctoral researcher
Dr. Lemagie is a postdoctoral scholar at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She received her PhD in Physical Oceanography at Oregon State University in 2018 and worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution before joining the Giddings lab group. Emily’s research investigates the physical and biological linkages and transport pathways in both estuarine and coastal environments on immediate to climatic timescales. She has focused on estuarine residence time, river plume dynamics, and across-shelf exchange in order to determine the immediate and long-term effects of event to climate-scale changes on coastal ecosystems. Currently she is studying the importance of remote oceanic forcing on estuarine exchange flow across the estuarine parameter space.
Dr. Xiaodong Wu
postdoctoral researcher
Dr. Alma Carolina Castillo Trujillo
postdoctoral researcher
Alma Carolina is a postdoctoral researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She received a Bachelor of Science in Oceanography from UABC in Ensenada, México and a Masters and PhD in Physical Oceanography, both from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is now using numerical models and observations as part of the SLOMO project to study the circulation around the Seychelles Islands. She has participated in several educational programs for the Hawaiian and Mexican communities and would like to establish similar outreach in Tijuana and San Diego.
Dr. Angelica Rodriguez
postdoctoral researcher
Angelica is a postdoctoral scholar with the Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation at SIO. She holds a B.S. in Physics with Specialization in Earth Science and a minor in Environmental Systems. In May 2019 she received her PhD in Physical Oceanography from SIO. Broadly, she is interested in the interaction between estuaries and the coastal ocean. Her doctoral work focused on the impacts of wave-current interaction on small scale buoyant coastal outflows and shoal-channel exchange in San Diego Bay. During her postdoc, she will be assessing how different meteorological and wave conditions in the San Diego region affect water levels and currents in SD Bay with the goal of informing shoreline protection and adaptation strategies. She will still be involved in work with our lab, creating the linkage between estuarine hydro/wave dynamics and shoreline vulnerability.
Dr. Madeleine Harvey
PhD graduate
Maddie was a graduate student in the Integrative Oceanography Division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She received a Bachelor of Science from Brown University in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2012. As an avid sailor growing up, her love of the ocean developed at a young age and grew into a desire to study ocean and coastal processes in order to work to devise solutions to the problems facing our oceans and estuaries today. Maddie is interested in using field observations to better understand coastal and estuarine dynamics. Specifically, she plans to research how sediment transport in the surf zone and rivers can impact the morphology and closure of the mouth of an estuary and how the mouth morphology affects physical, chemical, and biological processes within the estuary.
Dr. Isabella B. Arzeno
PhD graduate
Isabella was a graduate student studying physical oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, co-advised by Dr. Sarah Giddings and Dr. Geno Pawlak. She received a Bachelor of Science in Earth Systems and a Masters of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering, both from Stanford University. She is now using observations to study the interaction of currents with rough bathymetry, on different spatial scales. She is also the lead graduate student on the SLOMO project studying flow around the island nation of the Seychelles. Having grown up in Puerto Rico, Isabella is also consistently engaged in educational outreach to Hispanic communities.
Dr. Jacqueline McSweeney
Postdoctoral Researcher
Jack worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher with Dr. Giddings and Dr. Feddersen on the CSIDE project. She received her PhD at Rutgers University studying sediment dynamics in the Delaware Estuary. She is now doing a postdoc studying inner-shelf dynamics at OSU.
Heitor Schueroff de Souza
UCSD computer science & cognitive science
Heitor was an undergraduate researcher working on expanding upon the model visualization tool, FlowWeaver, originally developed by Neil Banas.
Adrian Urrea
UCSD mechanical and aerospace engineering
Adrian was an undergraduate researcher working on building biosensors to be put onto oysters. The sensors measured the oyster shell gape (how far open it is) to see its response to environmental stressors.