
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
PhD student
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.

Sierra Byrne
PhD student

Victoria Boatwright
PhD student
Victoria is a Physical Oceanography PhD student in the Petrik and Giddings research groups studying physical processes influencing biogeochemistry in estuarine and coastal regions, particularly in Southern California. She received her B.S. in Biological Physics from Georgetown University in 2022. Past research topics includes chlorophyll distributions within eddies in the California Current System from a biogeochemical ROMS model; impacts to primary productivity through mixing from offshore wind turbines in the North Sea through a turbulence-resolving LES simulation; and metrics for quantitatively monitoring, verifying, and reporting on carbon sequestration from marine carbon dioxide removal projects in ocean models. Her overarching research interests include submesoscale-to-mesoscale ocean dynamics, coupled physical and biogeochemical modeling, simulating coastal biophysical interactions, and climate change impacts to these processes. A goal of her research is to understand physical mechanisms that influence ecological communities and natural resources to inform decision-making for conservation and management.

Dr. Akanksha Gupta
postdoctoral researcher
former lab members

Dr. Duncan Wheeler
PhD graduate
Duncan Wheeler is a postdoc in the Department of Earth & Climate Sciences at Tufts University using observations from Greenland and Alaska to study ocean-glacier interactions. Duncan received his PhD in physical oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in April 2024. 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, first he examined 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 studied 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.

Dr. Lauren Kim
PhD graduate
Lauren is an Environmental Scientist at the State Water Resources Control Board in San Diego. She completed her PhD in May 2024 at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography working with co-advisors Levy, Giddings and Merrifield. Broadly, she is interested in coastal ocean processes and their interactions with land. Her first chapter focused on the morphodynamic responses of a dune-backed beach during high-energy storm conditions in the Outer Banks, NC while her other dissertation chapters focused on the influence of coastal processes and morphodynamics at a low-inflow-estuary mouth on freshwater resources upstream. Originally from Los Angeles, she received her BS in physics with a minor in physiology from Cal Poly, Pomona in 2017.

Dr. Elizabeth Brasseale
former postdoctoral researcher
Elizabeth Brasseale is currently a Postdoctoral researcher in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs at the University of Washington using oceanography to interpret eDNA samples for . She was a postdoctoral scholar in the Giddings lab from September 2020-December 2022 where she modeled 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
former postdoctoral researcher
Dr. Simpson is a Research Civil Engineer in the Coastal Observation and Analysis Branch at the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, Field Research Facility, U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center. They were a postdoctoral scholar in the Giddings lab from February 2022-December 2023. Alex's dissertation 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. At SIO, Alex investigated how small river plumes interact with the surf zone through the PiNC field campaign at Los Penasquitos Lagoon. They also worked on low-inflow mouth morphodynamics, which they continue to work on in their current position with USACE.

Dr. Emily Lemagie
former postdoctoral researcher
Dr. Lemagie is currently a Research Physical Scientist at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) studying ocean dynamics and the impacts on marine ecosystems in the North Pacific Ocean, Bering Sea, and U.S. Arctic. She was a postdoctoral scholar at SIO in the Giddings lab from December 2020 - May 2021 when she worked on examining ocean/estuarine exchange across multiple estuaries. 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.

Dr. Xiaodong Wu
former postdoctoral researcher

Dr. Alma Carolina Castillo Trujillo
former postdoctoral researcher
Alma Carolina Castillo Trujillo currently is the head of modeling at atdepth. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from September 2018 - February 2021 working with Giddings and Pawlak using numerical models and observations as part of the SLOMO project to study the circulation around the Seychelles Islands. 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 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
PhD graduate and former postdoctoral researcher
Angelica is a Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/CalTech focused on sea level science and heavily involved in the new NASA SWOT mission. She received her PhD in Physical Oceanography from SIO in May 2019 where she focused on the impacts of wave-current interaction on small scale buoyant coastal outflows and shoal-channel exchange in San Diego Bay. Prior to her current JPL position, she was a postdoctoral scholar with the Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation at SIO and worked as an Oceanographic Scientist at the Unmanned Maritime Vehicle Laboratory – Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific. She holds a B.S. in Physics with Specialization in Earth Science and a minor in Environmental Systems. Broadly, she is interested in the interaction between estuaries and the coastal ocean and applied sea level science.

Dr. Madeleine Harvey
PhD graduate
Maddie is an Oceanographer at Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport. She completed her PhD in the Giddings lab in November 2019 where she used field observations to better understand coastal and estuarine dynamics. Specifically, she examined 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. 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.

Dr. Isabella B. Arzeno Soltero
PhD graduate
Isabella is an Assistant Professor at UCLA in the School of Engineering. Isa was a graduate student studying physical oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, co-advised by Dr. Sarah Giddings and Dr. Geno Pawlak. She used observations to study the interaction of currents with rough bathymetry, on different spatial scales. She was also the lead graduate student on the SLOMO project studying flow around the island nation of the Seychelles. She received a Bachelor of Science in Earth Systems and a Masters of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering, both from Stanford University. She completed postdoctoral positions at UC Irvine and Stanford University examining seaweed aquaculture before starting her faculty position. She is committed to interdisciplinary research, research that integrates socio-environmental systems, and actively engages with local communities as shown in her work that started as an AGU Thriving Earth Exchange fellow.

Dr. Jacqueline McSweeney
former Postdoctoral Researcher
Jack is an assistant professor at Stoney Brook. She 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 and also did a postdoc studying inner-shelf dynamics at OSU.

Heitor Schueroff de Souza
former undergraduate researcher, 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
former undergraduate researcher, 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.
Mia Gonzalez
former undergraduate researcher, UCSD electrical engineering
Mia was an undergraduate researcher working on expanding upon the model visualization tool, FlowWeaver, originally developed by Neil Banas.
Abhishek Kumar
former undergraduate researcher,UCSD computer science & cognitive science
Abishek was an undergraduate researcher working on expanding upon the model visualization tool, FlowWeaver, originally developed by Neil Banas.
Corey Shono
former undergraduate researcher, UCSD chemistry department
Corey is a Data Scientist, Energy Forecasting Lead at Duke Energy Corporation. He worked as an undergraduate researcher in the Giddings lab comparing different ocean model particle tracking schemes.