Halmos Grads Present Research Work at Ocean Sciences Meeting

Three Fall 2023 Halmos College of Arts and Sciences graduates Breanna Vanderplow, Megan Miller and Alfredo Quezada attended a major oceanographic meeting and presented their thesis and dissertation work conducted at the Physical Oceanography Laboratory. Supported by a grant from the Office of Naval Research, students’ studies were devoted to important areas of research for Florida including rapid intensification of hurricanes and coral reef hydrodynamics.

The Ocean Sciences Meeting is an international event, which takes place every two years, and is attended by thousands of research scientists and engineers. Participants can also meet there and connect with representatives from the U.S. federal funding agencies. This year the meeting was held in New Orleans, La.

Professor Alex Soloviev, who leads the Physical Oceanography Laboratory, said, “The paper presented by Breanna Vanderplow that is based on her Ph.D. dissertation contributed to the understanding of rapid intensification of hurricanes. The existing forecasting models still cannot reliably predict this dangerous phenomenon. An example is Hurricane Maria in 2017 that intensified from Category 2 to 5 within 12 hours and left Puerto Rico unprepared for major devastation.

“The MS projects of Megan Miller and Alfredo Quezada were on coral reef hydrodynamics using computational fluid dynamic methods and robotic ocean instrumentation. They presented papers on physical oceanography of upwelling of the deep cold and nutrient-rich water that can affect coral reef health on the East Florida shelf. Such events are believed to be responsible for the suppression of coral reefs north of West Palm Beach.”

All three papers presented by the NSU graduates were well received by the ocean science community. After graduation, Miller is now with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and Quezada with the FAU Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute.

Posted 03/04/24