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.