PhD Graduate Student Opportunities

The University of Rhode Island (URI) Department of Ocean Engineering (OCE) and Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) are seeking three outstanding graduate PhD students to join a multidisciplinary research team studying air-sea interaction processes in high wind conditions.

Two students will be studying the effects of sprays generated by breaking waves on near-surface parameters of the lower atmospheric boundary layer (LB) in high wind conditions, in the context of air-sea interactions. This three-year project, funded by a grant of the US National Science Foundation (NSF), is an advanced computational effort, with a laboratory component performed as part of a collaboration. Models of both waves and the atmospheric BL will be developed and validated at various scales, and increasingly complex numerical experiments performed to elucidate the complex physics at play. For the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) aspects, the URI Principal Investigators (PIs), Profs. Tetsu Hara and Stephan Grilli, will collaborate with the Lattice-Boltzman modeling group of Prof. Manfred Krafczyk at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany.

The third student will be studying coupled air-sea processes in hurricanes. This multi-year project, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP), aims at improving hurricane predictions using advanced high-resolution numerical models. The PI, Prof. Isaac Ginis, collaborates in this research with scientists at NOAA, Navy and other academic institutions.

Three full Graduate Research Assistantships (GRAs) are available on the projects, which provide both academic and summer stipends and tuition. To fill these GRAs, we are seeking highly qualified individuals who are interested in working with the PIs on these exciting projects and in completing a PhD in either Physical Oceanography or Ocean Engineering at URI. Due to the advanced CFD nature of the anticipated work, a Masters degree in oceanography, physics, engineering, computer sciences, applied mathematics or related field, and relevant CFD experience, is desirable, but highly qualified individuals with a strong bachelor degree in one of these fields will be considered as well. Applicants should have strong mathematical and computer skills (particularly using a high level programming language such as FORTRAN, in a heavily parallel processing environment), and a strong background in fluid mechanics (both physical and computational aspects).

Admission is rolling and review of applications will continue until the positions are filled. Applications to URI’s graduate programs are available from our graduate school website:

http://www.uri.edu/gsadmis/gs_apply.html

If interested, please send specific inquiries to the PIs:

Tetsu Hara

Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, RI 02882

tel: 1-401-874-6509; fax: 1-401-874-6728

email: thara@uri.edu; Web: http://www.po.gso.uri.edu/airsea

Stephan Grilli

Department of Ocean Engineering, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, RI 02882

tel: 1-401-874-6636; fax: 1-401-874-6837

email: grilli@oce.uri.edu; web: http://www.oce.uri.edu/~grilli

Isaac Ginis

Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island

Narragansett, RI 02882 U.S.A.

Tel: (401) 874-6484; Fax: (401) 874-6728

Email: iginis@gso.uri.edu; Web: www.po.gso.uri.edu/Numerical/ig