POGO-SCOR Fellowships 2008

Mr Mahongo is a Research Officer with the Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute (TAFIRI) in Tanzania. He is currently working on the Zanzibar Channel Project where they hope to develop and implement high-resolution limited-area models and data-assimilation systems. Mr Mahongo spent one month working with Dr Javier Zavala-Garay in the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University USA. During this time he received training in use of the Regional Ocean Modelling System (ROMS) to model the dynamics of the Zanzibar Channel and plans to continue collaborating with Dr Zavala-Garay to further develop the project.

Mr Joseph Maina is a Research Associate at the Wildlife Conservation Society Coral Reef Conservation Project in Kenya. He trained in remotes sensing including marine applications, GIS and Modelling fields and is currently involved in work which focuses on effects of physical disturbances on marine and coastal ecological systems; and on the vulnerability of ecological systems to ocean climate change related stresses. Joseph will spend three months working with Dr Paolo Cipollini at the Laboratory for Satellite Oceanography, National Oceanography Centre Southampton, UK where he will receive training in coastal altimetry in support of ALTICORE- Africa.

Ms Wided Aloui is a computer engineer at the Institut National des Sciences et Technologies de la Mer in Tunisia where she is involved in oceanographic data management in the Tunisian Date Centre. In particular Wided is involved in the development and maintenance of physical oceanographic databases and is currently working on sea level data processing techniques with particular emphasis on format conversion and quality control procedures. Wided will spend 2 months at the British Oceanographic Data Centre, United Kingdom under the supervision of Dr Lesley J Rickards, where she will receive training in quality control of time series sea level data.

Dr Juliet Hermes is a Manager and Oceanographer with the South African Environmental Observation Network, she is also an honorary Research Associate in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Cape Town. Her current work is related to the marine offshore node including deploying Argo floats, setting up fixed point monitoring and collaborating on multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional monitoring projects. In addition she helps co-ordinate, archive and disseminate oceanographic data for use in a variety of studies in South Africa. Dr Hermes attended four weeks of a training course in integrated, multidisciplinary oceanography at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) under the supervision of F Gerald Plumley and where she also interacted with other POGO students.

Mr Xavier Vidal is a PhD student at the Unversidad Autonoma de Baja California (UABC) where he is part of the Surface Currents observation programme of the ‘Gulf of “Tehuantepec” where Xavier has recently been responsible for maintenance and data management for two radar stations. Xavier spent three months working with Professor Pierre Flament at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA, where he was due to receive field training and learn techniques in post processing of sea surface currents using High Frequency Radar data.

Mr Hector Garcia Nava is a PhD student in Physical Oceanography at the Centro de Investigación Cientifica y de Education Superior de Ensenada (CICESE) in Baja California. CICESE owns and ASIS buoy that was successfully deployed in 2005 and Hector was involved in the deployment activities. For his visiting fellowship Hector spent three months working with Professor Brian Haus at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences of the University of Miami, USA, to receive training in laboratory and field techniques for collection and processing measurements associated with of air-sea interaction data.

Ms Ivonne Montes is a PhD student in Oceanography from Peru based currently at the Universidad de Concepcion, Chile. Ivonne’s work involves the application of a Regional Ocean Model System (ROMS) and Lagrangian code (ARIANE) to fill gaps in in situ observations of current systems in the Southeastern Tropical Pacific Ocean. She spent two months working under the supervision of Dr Bruno Blanke at the Laboratoire de Physique des Oceans, France, learning to master and adapt analysis enabled by ARIANE to her own specific model configuration for numerical simulation runs in the Southeastern Tropical Pacific.

Mr Rodrigo Pereira is a PhD student in high latitude physical oceanography at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (FURG) where he is a researcher on the SOS-Climate project investigating shelf-slope interactions around Antarctica. Rodrigo spent two months working under the supervision of Professor Karen J Heywood at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, United Kingdom where he received training in analysis of the OCCAM model outputs and moorings data in Antarctic Peninsula area that will help with investigations of the variability of the Antarctic properties and currents.

Mr M Anil Kumar is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, India where he has been working on intraseasonal variability in the equatorial Indian Ocean at Madden Jullian Oscillations. Mr Kumar has been using long-term time series currents data generated as part of the Indian Ocean Global Ocean Observing System (IO-GOOS). Mr Kumar has spent two months working under the supervision of Dr K Mizuno at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Japan, to receive training in methods of analysis of time series of ADCP currents from the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean and JAMSTEC OFES model simulations with reference to Madden Julian Oscillation variability.

Ms Mariana Soppa is a Research Assistant in the Southern Regional Centre for Space Research (CRS) at the National Institute for Space Research, Brazil where she is involved in the Antarctic Programme specifically looking at climate variability of the Southwestern Atlantic Ocean and possible connections to the Southern Ocean. She has spent three months at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton, United Kingdom working with Dr David Cromwell. Here she has received training in the study and application of satellite data and in statistical and signal processing techniques to improve quantitative analysis and understanding of the spatiotemporal variability of the Southwestern Atlantic ocean and related climate forcing.

Ms Jadranka Sepic is a research fellow at the Institute for Oceanography and Fisheries (IOF) in Croatia and also a PhD student at the University of Zagreb studying meteotsunamis. Ms Sepic spent three months working under the supervision of Dr Sebastian Monserrat at the University of Balearic Islands, Mallorca, Spain where she has received training in the use of advanced analysis and modelling techniques in investigation of unusual oceanography phenomena appropriate for Mediterranean Sea conditions and relevant to the objective so MedGOOS and the Mediterranean Operational Oceanogrpahic Network (MOON)

Dr Madhusoodanan is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the Nansen Environmental Research Centre, Kerala, India currently involved with the implementation of the ROMS model for further application to Indian waters. Dr Madhusoodanan has spent three months at the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre, Bergen, Norway working under the supervision of Laurent Bertino where he received training to help him learn the state-of-the-art modelling techniques using HYCOM and TOPAZ to assist with work to compute meridional heat transport in Indian Ocean and its dependency on the Indonesian Throughflow.

Ms Asmi Napitu is a researcher /junior oceanographer at the Institute for Marine Research Observation (IMRO) of the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Indonesia who are interested in monitoring ocean dynamic parameters for use to ocean users. Recently Asmi has been working on complex problems associated with the ocean dynamics and fisheries in Indonesian seas. Asmi will spend three months working under the supervision of Professor Arnold Gordon at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) of Columbia University, USA where she will receive training in processing of data from mooring components deployed in the Makassar Strait. She will also learn techniques in the analysis of tidal characteristics associated with the mixing process in the inflow passage of the Indonesian throughflow.

Mr Yesid Duque is an Assistant Researcher at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Research, Colombia where he is part of a project in charge of the study of the phytoplankton community on the Caribbean Colombian Coast, specifically concerned with presence and impacts of Harmful Algal Blooms in coastal waters. Yesid will spend three months working with Daniel Grunbaum at the University of Washington, School of Oceanography, USA, to receive training in the use of advanced cell tracking video and analysis to quantify movement characteristics and fine-scale distributions of harmful cells.

Mr Gonzalo Caló is a PhD student at the Foundation for Applied Biological Research (FIBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina where he is studying Eukaryotic picophytoplankton in the Argentinian Sea. Gonzalo is part of a group starting to use molecular techniques for the study of genetic diversity and population dynamics of picophytoplankton. He will spend three months working under the supervision of Dr Ramon Massana at the Molera Institute of Science of the Sea, Spain, where he will learn and practice the technique Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization (FISH) to assist with studies on the abundance and distribution of picophytoeukaryotes in the Argentinean Sea.