MOD Engineer Spotlight: Helen Dufel

What is your background in and what are you working on now? 
I’m from upstate New York and I got my undergraduate degree in Marine Vertebrate Biology from Stony Brook University in Long Island. After college I taught sailing and ended up working with the Sea Education Association (also known as SEA Semester). It's a non-profit that takes students to sea onboard two steel hulled brigantines equipped with labs. They’re in essence smaller versions of a research vessel with CTD rosettes, a flow through system, et. cetera. The students work on the SEA Semester campus in Woods Hole for six weeks developing a project and designing their sampling plan, and then they would join us on the ship to gather data, analyze it, and write a paper for their course credit. I worked on their ships mostly in the south pacific for a little over four years; it’s where I got a broad idea of the technical skills required to conduct scientific research at sea and became keen to dive deeper into those systems and skills. Scripps seemed like a great place to continue building upon those skills and became an important personal goal of mine.

My current role in the MOD group is as a development technician. That means that I work supporting the three different pools of engineers in MOD: mechanical, electrical, and software. Some days I’ll be machining parts, other days I’ll solder underwater connections, and these days I’m getting more and more into software to help program our new winch system. Another one of my responsibilities is to maintain and prepare off-the-shelf instruments used in moorings and field experiments. 

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
That I get to learn something new every single day. There are so many challenges to collecting quality data so there is always a new puzzle to solve. I also love being outside and working on ships. Living and working at sea is one of the main things that originally drew me to oceanography. 

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer? 
I became obsessed with the ocean when I was really young. When I was 5 years old I told my mom that I wanted to be a dolphin trainer and she explained that if I became a marine biologist I could be just that. I was motivated to adopt marine science as part of my identity and even remember showing up to school career day wearing swimmies and goggles. 

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean or make gadgets? 
I think it was a combination of things. My dad started a tugboat company when I was young, so I grew up on working ships and got that early exposure to the maritime community. We’d also often travel down to Florida and getting to observe marine organisms on beaches and in aquariums there made me want to learn everything about them.

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography? 
To come in with an open mind, a willingness to learn, and to often ask how you can be helpful. It’s also important to be adaptable and flexible with plans changing on short notice. Working on ships creates a unique sense of community, so working well in a team environment is important.

What does a typical workday look like for you? 
My work is quite dependent on the specific projects that the group is focusing on, so my days can vary a lot from one week to the next. This endless stream of novel challenges is one of the reasons I was interested in working here in the first place. For the most part, I spend my mornings answering emails, placing orders, going through instrument manuals, learning, and planning. In the afternoon I’m usually on my feet, whether I’m soldering, organizing, preparing instruments, or whatever else pops up. 

What drew you to work at Scripps? 
My old job was down the street from WHOI, and I always had in my mind that WHOI and Scripps were the two top places for oceanography. I know there’s plenty of other universities and centers devoted to oceanographic research, but WHOI and Scripps were my two main aspirations. I kept my eye on the Scripps website for years waiting for an opportunity until I found the right one. Having frequent opportunities to go to sea, the chance to be trained by ocean focused engineers, plus enrolling in the diving and boat driving programs made working here a no-brainer. The beauty and adventure of living in Southern California was an added bonus.

Is there a particular scientist/person/engineer that inspires you?
Everybody in the MOD group is brilliant, good at what they do, and kind. In particular, I’m inspired by Spencer Kawamoto. He holds SO MUCH information in his brain from years of working in this field. He knows all of the detailsabout all the instruments that we work with, so I’ve been trying hard to download all of that information into my brain hoping to become as knowledgeable and good at solving problems as he is. 

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
I really like to craft. Years of working on sailboats that don’t have any internet forces you to get  a bit creative with your time, so I picked up whittling and gradually moved on to larger woodworking projects. I recently made a wooden surfboard that I still have to fiberglass, but I hope to finish it this summer and take it out on the water. 

Written by Noel Gutierrez-Brizuela/Kerstin Bergentz

MOD Student Spotlight: Alex Andriatis

What is your background and what are you working on now? 
I did my undergrad in physics at MIT. Why physics? Well, I enjoyed how fundamental it is, plus and as a kid I really enjoyed sci-fi and there were a lot of cool science things in sci-fi, especially related to space travel and I wanted to learn all the physical concepts behind that. As an undergraduate I was fortunate to get quite a bit of research experience. For example, I worked in a group that was trying to solve the issue of nuclear waste disposal, and my role there was basically to look at different compounds in which to embed nuclear waste. There was a lot of playing around with mud in the lab, it was fun. I did a bio-physics internship over one summer and then I got into a particle physics group and worked two summers at CERN in Switzerland. But at the end of my undergrad, I realized that I didn’t want to do anything so theoretical as in a conventional physics PhD but I still wanted to stay in science. Thinking about my love for the ocean and physics, and my other passion at the time, which was climate change and climate activism, the merge of all of those somehow ended up being physical oceanography and here we are.

Right now I’m working on wind-driven mixing of the ocean and I’m mainly looking at two physical processes from observations. The first one is the appearance of Langmuir circulations which are responsible for turbulent mixing at the near-surface. It’s mixing driven by the combination of wind and waves. The second physical concept is the generation of near-inertial internal waves which are generated by wind acting on the mixed layer, and that mixed layer moving at the inertial frequency and generating internal waves from there.

Climate work
I currently also have a fellowship as a Carbon Neutrality Initiative Fellow through the UC Office of the President. The goal of this project is to have students involved in sustainability in the UC system in general. My specific role is helping the sustainability and energy managers at UCSD look at decarbonization pathways for the campus. I’m also involved in other grassroots climate activism organizations on campus, and it is something I enjoy working on, thinking about our impact on the world, especially as we go about and do science. For example, I was part of an initiative a couple of years ago thinking about the electrification of Scripps research vessels.

I really enjoy this role of working with UCSD decision makers on finding an effective trajectory for the campus because I think it is the most impactful way to implement changes and improvements. Change when it does occur is definitely motivated by actions from the outside, but it most always happens from within. When systems, business and institutions are set up in the right way it makes it easier for the individual to make climate smart choices.

Alex and the epsi fish after a day of profiling

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
I really enjoy thinking about the physics concepts behind what we see in nature. To me it’s interesting on its own to know how the ocean moves, and that there are these processes that we are not able to see with our naked eye. Well, in some cases we are, take Langmuir circulation for example. But now I’m working on actually measuring these things and studying the reasons why they happen and the implications of them. I feel like the work brings some sort of deeper connection to nature beyond just seeing things happen.

Passing the Sally Ride at MarFac on a day cruise with MOD emeritus Rob Pinkel

 When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer? 
I think so. I’d like to recall that in elementary school I answered the question “what do you want to be when you grow up” with “marine biologist”. I think my answer was influenced by the fact that I grew up near the coast and I loved dolphins as a kid, though I never cared too much about species of animals. But I think there was a scientific inclination from an early age and physical oceanography is close enough that I suppose I can say I fulfilled my childhood dream?

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean? 
When I was young, I was fortunate enough to get to go on family trips to the Caribbean. Both my parents are scuba divers, so I learned to dive too at an early age. I also got to try sailing at a summer camp one year and ended up teaching sailing for a few summers too. I think getting to be in, on, and around the ocean as a kid and being into physics definitely put me on a path towards studying the physics of the ocean. 

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into graduate school in oceanography? 
Besides a good grasp of math and physics, I think being prepared to realize that you have so much left to learn, especially in terms of doing self-directed research. That was the thing I was most unprepared for coming into graduate school, I had plenty of research experience but little to no experience of how to independently sit down and come up with questions based on previous science and then how to go about answering those questions. There is no class for that, undergrad or PhD, and it has taken me a long time to learn, in fact, I am still learning and digesting that even as a 5th year student.

Getting ready for the night shift on the Sally Ride

What does a typical workday look like for you? 
I live close enough that I’m able to bike into work and that adds a lot to my day, overall happiness and well-being. My bike ride is along the coast which is very scenic too. Most of my days are 9-5 and I spend most of my time writing code in Matlab. The things I do are data formatting, data analysis and synthesis of findings to explain a phenomenon that I’m trying to describe and that all happens staring at a screen. And then I bike home. It might sound monotonous, though I think that describes a typical day for a lot of intellectual workers in general, but the unique experience of doing observational physical oceanography is that those days are broken up every now and again by the experience of going to sea, which is totally different and very unique and one of my favorite parts of this job. At sea your workday consists of doing whatever is needed for as many hours are needed to accomplish the science tasks on a ship. The two cruises I’ve done to collect data for my thesis I was on the night shift, which is a special experience. Both in terms of the camaraderie you experience with fellow night shift colleagues, and the experience of standing on the back deck looking into the pitch black while your instrument goes up and down profiling. It is hard to describe if you haven’t been there.

Struggling up the dangerous Naga Way intersection to get to work

What drew you to Scripps? 
Well, the two institutions I was considering applying to was here and “East Scripps”, aka WHOI [Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution]. I had already spent a lot of time on the east coast growing up in New Jersey and going to school in Boston, so the deciding factor for me ended up being the novelty of living in California. Especially San Diego and having this view of the ocean from some nice cliffs and perfect weather year-round. It sounds a bit cliché but that was a big plus with this place.

Is there a particular scientist/person/thing that inspires you?
I think my answer would be the field of science fiction which in general has been one the biggest inspirations throughout my life. Science fiction, more than any other genre of art or media, expands the horizon of what is possible, not only in a technological sense but also in terms of political realities and possibilities. You can construct these whole worlds of different technology, physics, politics, and societal structures that enables you to expand your own vision and it also makes you reflect on you own life and say, “what are the possibilities I’m not considering?”. The horizon broadening aspect of science fiction is very inspiring to me.

Deploying an ADCP with fellow student Anela Akiona (left)

 Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
Growing up I played the piano and have on several occasions played in Carnegie Hall as part of piano competitions in high school. My grandmother was a professor at the Moscow Conservatory and I started playing when I was five or six and I played for many years, but today I’m a bit out of practice.

Written by Kerstin Bergentz

MOD Scientist Spotlight: Gunnar Voet

What is your background and what are you working on now? 
My background is in physics which I did at University of Hamburg in Germany, where I also took some classes in oceanography. In German we call the degree you get after five years a “diploma” but it’s the equivalent of a Master’s degree where you do a thesis project for all of your last year. I actually had no plans on becoming an oceanographer, but as things worked out, I was very happy to get to write my thesis on something other than elementary particles and relativity. Oceanography sort of became my escape route. I wrote my thesis on Denmark Strait overflow and even got to go to sea, it was a lot of fun, and I eventually ended up doing my PhD in the same research group.

After finishing my PhD, I took a little break from academia and for a time I worked as a programmer. After a while it got boring, and I ended up joining this research project looking at the ocean around the first German offshore wind park. However, just as I was spinning up on the job I got a call from my PhD advisor telling me that there were a couple of people up in Seattle that were looking for a postdoc, and they had inquired about me since we had met working on the Denmark Strait overflow. So, I applied and got the position, quit the wind park job and moved to Seattle. There I worked with James Girton and Matthew Alford on the abyssal overflow through the Samoan Passage, which connected to what I had been working on before. When Matthew was offered a professorship at Scripps, he offered me a job as part of his group, and I accepted and moved down to San Diego. Now I’ve been here at Scripps for almost a decade.

My current role in the MOD lab is a mix between a PI / researcher and an engineer. I’ve sort of specialized in subsurface moorings for oceanographic research. The typical set up is a heavy anchor to which you attach a line with different sensors to measure temperature, salinity, velocity, and at times even turbulence. The line is held upright by a buoy, but the whole system is submerged under water so we don’t have to worry about ship traffic or the force of surface waves. In my research I use a lot of this mooring data, but I also collect observations from the ship to look at the physical processes driving turbulence in the deep ocean.  

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
The societal aspect of researching the ocean and climate. Although on a day-to-day basis it might not seem like one is having an impact, it still feels rewarding to do this kind of work and contribute to the understanding of our planet and climate. Through the work that we do we help improve climate models, and we see that they are getting rather accurate in predicting climate change which hopefully makes more people take them seriously.

A lot of the work I do is looking at turbulent mixing processes in the deep ocean which is one of the key elements that lead to model uncertainty when it comes to climate prediction. Having a better understanding of the physical processes in the deep ocean is important. However far removed from us they may seem they actually have a rather large societal impact.

I also really enjoy going to sea. Being in a confined space with people for a long time is like a little social experiment every time, but often it’s great fun. Especially when you get to work with great people which is usually the case. 

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist or engineer? 
No no, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a train conductor. Later, as a teenager, I had no idea what I wanted to do, and it was my high school teacher that suggested I go into Geosciences. I ended up taking a bit of a roundabout way to get there I suppose. My parents studied math and physics respectively though, so going into science was not a strange concept when I was growing up.

 Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean? 
We always spent the summers on a little island off the coast of northern Germany, one of the East Frisian Islands that stretch from Germany all the way towards the Netherlands. My parents would pitch a tent at the beginning of the summer, and me and my brother would spend the better part of our holidays there right on the beach. In a way I guess I grew up on the ocean, at least during the summers.

 What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography or academia in general?
Curiosity is important, but you also need to be able to deal with disappointment. It’s good to be able to work at least partially self-motivated and not be afraid of struggling with things, difficult moments and emotions included. Of course you can ask people for help and it’s almost always a team effort, but ultimately someone has got to do the work. If you’re a good writer and coder that helps too, and if you enjoy that it makes your work more fun, same with logical thinking and reading. But these are all skills you can acquire as you start working. Ultimately though I think you need to be at least a little bit interested in the work.

I think it’s also important to recognize that you’re not going to be an expert in all the things you do as a researcher. You work in a field that is very specialized but also overlaps with other fields. For example, if you are an observational oceanographer you’ll still be working with modelers, not to mention engineers, and it can sometimes feel like it’s too much to learn and take in being surrounded by people who are experts at their thing. But you do not have to master it all to be able to collaborate well, plus it’s part of what makes work interesting, that there are always opportunities for growth.

What does a typical work-day look like for you? 
On a good day I get to bike to work, I am a climate researcher after all so that’s something I like to do, and then I typically start off by doing some paper reading. Then there might be some more engineering-like work, planning a new experiment, what we need to build, cruise logistics and more, likely I’ll meet with the MOD engineers to coordinate. Hopefully I eventually get to do some data analysis and make some figures. In an ideal world I then move those figures into a paper draft, but of course I don’t do all these things every single day. On any given day it is also likely that I’m connecting with other researchers in the MOD lab, or at other institutions, to collaborate on proposals or papers, and that is something I enjoy.

What drew you to work at Scripps? 
It’s so hard to leave because the weather is so good? Jokes aside, it is a wonderful research community full of mostly good people who really put in an effort to make Scripps a fun and welcoming environment.

Is there a particular scientist or person that inspires you?
This sort of feeds into my previous answer but Jen MacKinnon is a person who is doing such a great job doing awesome research, while at the same time also putting in a lot of effort into the community. It is no coincidence Scripps is a nice place to work at, there are many people who work to make it so, Jen included. She manages to do amazing research AND does a great job at making Scripps more welcoming, diverse and inclusive which is something I really appreciate.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
Well, full honesty, the project that I was about to join working on an offshore wind park? A very big reason I was attracted to that job was because the name of that project was Research at Alpha Ventus, or RAVE for short. As someone who enjoyed, and still enjoys, a good techno party I thought it was brilliant to be working at “RAVE”, it almost felt like it was meant to be…

Written by Kerstin Bergentz

TLC PILOT 2023

The MOD lab just completed our pilot for the TLC experiment in the La Jolla Canyon. We were looking for turbulence near the bottom of the canyon, in the mid water-column and along the sides. More info about the goal of the project and the science can be found on the project page here. Below are some photos from the pilot.

The past two weeks we’ve been out sampling just outside La Jolla Shores and we spent many days leaving San Diego harbor at sunrise on the Beyster, one of the SIO fleet’s smallest research vessels.

San Diego harbor at sunrise

The Beyster

The Beyster as seen from some of our friends in another small SIO workboat.

We used our lab’s turbulence-measuring instrument, the epsilometer (left below), along with an ADCP (acoustic doppler current profiler) and an echosounder (right).

Epsilometer about to go down in the water.

ADCP + Echosounder

 We had a cool lab setup that allowed us to see what was going on with all three instruments in real time.

Real time data! ADCP far left, echosounder middle and then the two right-hand screens are the epsilometer.

We sometimes had to repair the cable, but we always had fun doing it!

Eminent engineers doing cable repairs…

… and some more cable repairs…

And of course, while we worked long days, the views made it worthwhile.

See you next year for the full experiment!

Text and photos by Andrea Rodriguez-Marin Freudmann

MOD Engineer Spotlight: San Nguyen

What is your background and what are you working on at the moment? 
I have a bachelors degree in Mathematics and Physics with a minor in computer science from the University of Puget Sound, and came to Scripps as a graduate student in the physical oceanography program. Though I actually didn’t finish that, but instead continued on with the MOD group as an engineer. I work on many different projects, from the towed phased array sonar (T-pads) to our winches to the various acquisition systems for our instruments.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
The research and development of new instrumentation is always interesting. It’s an exploration, “what can we measure?”, and pushing the boundaries of what we think we can do in the field, that is what keeps me excited. Don’t get me wrong, it can be a lot of work, but there’s also this amazing opportunity to go out and see the world and try to understand it from different perspectives. And it is not just about understanding it better, it is also about making it better.

When you were a kid, did you expect to be an engineer? 
I’ve always liked to tinker with things and explore the world in terms of machinery and such, so in a way I’m not surprised I ended up doing engineering work. It was my father who opened my eyes to these kinds of things, “what can you break and then put back together and make it better?” That’s how you learn.

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean and make gadgets? 
The natural environment is something I enjoy a lot and I think I’ve always had that. To get to learn about it, to travel and explore  and to make gadgets to help understand it better, it’s the best of many worlds.

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when going into oceanography and becoming a member of the engineering development team? 
I think curiosity helps a lot. Being curious enough to go out there and ask questions, why, how, and what can we do better? Unless you truly know how something works you will not be able to think critically about it and understand where the opportunities and limitations are. Also, don’t be afraid of failure. When you make a mistake, which is inevitable, you just have to learn from it. When breaking the frontier you will break some things. Take it as an opportunity to better understand what you’re working with.

T-Pads preparation on NORSE 2022

What does a typical work-day look like for you? 
That depends. If you’re at sea you wake up, walk less than two minutes to the lab and you’re at work. You can find yourself doing anything from fixing something that broke while you were asleep, to be on watch and oversee the profiling instruments for example. And if you have a little bit of down time there’s always some other work to do, development, designing etc. If it’s a regular day on land it can be a bit more varied, mainly depending on if we’re preparing for a big cruise. If so there’s typically a lot of work to do packing and preparing instruments, those days are often long. I do a lot of the software in the group so I spend quite a bit of time coding. Since we design our own instruments from the ground up there is a lot of collaboration between the software, electrical and mechanical teams (even though we all do a little bit of everything), so that a normal week there are also a few meetings about what everyone is doing.

What drew you to Scripps? 
Scripps is a very enjoyable environment to work in and MOD is the perfect place if you like research and development like I do. The collaboration between scientists and engineers and the amazing people in the MOD lab is quite something.

Is there a particular something or person that inspires you?
I grew up in a place of simplicity with our access to a lot of modern technology. My dad inspired me to understand how the machines we did have around us worked, I think I have a lot of my engineering side from him. But as a kid I also enjoyed the natural world a lot, being in nature, exploring. The ideal scenario is to be able to combine those two together: being able to help better understand and protect the natural world through the use of technology. There is also a mindfulness aspect to all of this that is inspiring to me, how everything is connected and go together.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
Let me think… I do love taking a lot of photographs, but that’s not really a secret. Some of my photos can be found here. I also love to garden and am getting pretty good at composting, but that’s also something a lot of people know. I am a recent first-time dad, I guess that is a fun fact. Becoming a dad has actually gotten me to think a lot about what kind of world I want to build for my son. I wish we lived in a society that was more mindful with our resources, that thought more about the carbon footprint of various things, where our food comes from, how everything is connected etcetera. I want to use the time I have here, and all the opportunities I’ve been fortunate enough to have, and make good use of them to help inspire the next generation to do and be better.

Jan Mayen

Tromsø, Norway

Written by Kerstin Bergentz

MOD Student Spotlight: Devon Northcott

What is your background and what are you studying/working on right now? 
I grew up in Santa Cruz and got a bachelors degree in physics from UC San Diego. After graduating I moved back home and spent two years doing various kinds of work. I did a winter of life guarding, which is something I’ve done since I was a teenager, and then I spent about a year and a half at MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) doing all sorts of research work. I worked on CO2 fluxes, pH in tide pools, modeling of krill dynamics, analysis of environmental DNA and more. There was a fair amount of biology involved, I was part of  BOG - the Biological Oceanographic Group. It was a lot of fieldwork and a lot of good times.

I started graduate school at Scripps in the fall of 2019 in the Applied Ocean Sciences program working with Professor Drew Lucas. My work is basically on all sorts of things related to how to measure ocean velocities, primarily using acoustics.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
Going out on boats is a big factor. But I think it’s also the ocean in general, it’s been such a big part of my life. I grew up going to the beach all the time as a kid and my first job was life guarding in Santa Cruz. I’ve literally spent every summer since I was probably 15 staring at the ocean for 8 hours a day. The ocean has always had a feeling of home for me. I just love it.

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist? 
Yes, I did. My parents are both scientists, their friends were scientist, I didn’t even know there was a job beyond scientist. I mean, I probably wanted to be a digger driver or airplane pilot at some point in my life, but for most of what I can remember, a  “scientist” is what I wanted to be.

Devon waiting to deploy a VMP aboard the Pt Sur in the Gulf of Mexico during fieldwork for SUNRISE.

Wirewalker recovery during SUNRISE 2022.

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean? 
Just being in, on and around the ocean, looking at it, seeing it change with the seasons and weather. Surfing, life guarding, sailing, all of those things probably contributed too. We lived about 6 miles from the ocean and I spent most of my free time at the beach.

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when thinking about going to graduate school in oceanography? 
Honestly, I think anyone can get through graduate school. You rely so much on your peers and other graduate students. Everyone has strengths or weaknesses and you help each other out and fill in for each other. Teamwork is important. You’ll probably make it through on sheer brilliance alone too, but I’m not sure you’ll come out a better scientist in the other end.

What does a typical work-day look like for you? 
Oftentimes I just sit in front of a computer for several hours, but I’m also easily distracted in front of a screen, thus I like to get into the lab and see what the engineers are up to and see if I can help them out. I try to go surfing as often as possible and I also meet up with my classmates for lunch every now and again too, human connection is important. Of course I try to get on ships as much as I can, it’s hard work often 12-18h a day seven days a week, but it’s very hands on, which I like.

Devon aboard the Nave Alliance in the North Atlantic during fieldwork for NORSE 2022.

What drew you to Scripps? 
It was probably the MOD group which is quite unique in the fact that they build all of their own instrumentation. Most other oceanographers just go buy off the shelf instruments, and if there’s any engineering involved it’s just about integrating that off-the-shelf piece into whatever off-the-shelf platform they’re using. MOD is unique, we’re building our own sonars from the raw parts, wires, crystals and circuits and we make our own software too. That does not happen in many groups around the world as far as I know. I looked at a couple of other graduate schools, but MOD was the only place that had that. It’s cool and exciting. You get to use new instruments and collect unique data that no one else can get.

Is there a particular scientist or person or something that inspires you?
I think it’s mostly the ocean actually. If I wasn’t inspired by, and curious about, the ocean I wouldn’t keep doing what I’m doing.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
Well, I used to be a certified jet ski driver, or technically it’s a “rescue water craft driver”, when I was lifeguarding. I even got to teach other people how to drive jet skis, and I’ve spent a lot of time going out helping surfers and swimmers get back to shore. Oh, and during the pandemic I got pretty good at baking sourdough too.

Text and photos by Kerstin Bergentz

MOD Engineer Spotlight: Sara Goheen

What is your background and what are you working on at the moment? 
I did mechanical and ocean engineering as my major at MIT. After graduating I spent a year and a half working at a friend’s tech startup in San Francisco, but I missed the “hands on” part and actually making things, plus I missed the ocean. Thus, I decided to move to San Diego. When I got here, I religiously checked the Scripp’s job listings and eventually saw an opening in MOD. I thought it sounded phenomenal, sent in my application, and now it’s been six years. I’m currently working mostly with the epsi, our in-house microstructure instrument to measure small scale turbulence in the ocean. That was my first project when I joined MOD and since then we’ve gone through several iterations and developed the deep version that can go down to 2000m. We are currently redesigning the deep version to fall faster for a project in May where it will have to combat stronger currents to get down to the depth we are most interested in measuring. Next up I’m going to be the project lead on making the “epsi-SOLO” where we’re trying to integrate our sensors onto a SOLO float. We all do a little bit of everything as engineers, but my main focus area is the mechanical stuff.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
Everything! I really love the fieldwork aspect of the job – it is great getting to be out there on the water and measure things instead of just making instruments and sending them off to be used by someone else. Getting to see it work and go through the whole process, testing, improving etcetera,  is really cool. Also, I honestly don’t know why we’re bothering with space, there is so much to learn about the ocean and our planet in general. It really feels like you’re at the frontier of human exploration. Even when I don’t understand all the science bits, I love the feeling of learning things and advancing our understanding of the ocean.

Last but not least I’d have to say that the people I get to work with also keep me excited about my job. I’m surrounded by amazing humans that are the perfect blend of supersmart, quirky, caring, and interesting and it really makes all the difference to have fun people around you.

When you were a kid, did you expect to be an engineer? 
No, not really, I thought I was going to do architecture. As a kid I didn’t even know that oceanography was a thing and I thought that if you’re into designing, building things, sustainability and all that, you should go into green architecture. I still think that could have been fun, but it’s a different timeline. Things take much longer in architecture. I like being able to tinker with something, make a prototype and throw it in the ocean to test it almost right away. Designing buildings involves years of planning and it might not even get built at all.

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean and make gadgets? 
I’ve always been one to tinker with things and keep my hands busy, from origami to drawing and all sorts of crafts from basket weaving to wire working. I love making things of all different mediums and combining different techniques in my projects. I also loved playing with Lego growing up, and of course my collection has grown. Hence, I’m not super surprised I now make gadgets for a living.

As for me ending up working with the ocean, that’s not entirely surprising either. I grew up near the ocean in New Jersey, we lived probably 15 minutes from the beach, and my dad was a commercial fisherman. As a kid I did a lot of surfing, snorkeling, fishing, clamming and all that. I don’t fish a whole lot anymore, but I’ve always liked being on the water and going out in our small boat (though as a kid I remember going out scalloping on a day trip with my dad and I was just puking my guts out and had a rough time).

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when thinking about getting into oceanography and becoming a member of the engineering development team? 
I think it is important to not be afraid to ask questions, to be curious about trying new things and not think that you have to perfect a design before you prototype it. When I started, I would be tweaking a design a million times before I’d cut it out, say on the router table, and then I’d instantly notice everything that was wrong with it. The more time you spend just getting the prototypes out the quicker your design progresses and before you know it, you’re already on version “n” and it’s actually working, versus spending all that time on the computer and it’s looking nice but it’s not functional.

What does a typical workday look like for you? 
There are days when you spend hours looking up different types of epoxies, reading various data sheets, looking into material properties and specifications, and then trying to combine everything in SolidWorks. Then there are days when you spend hours in the machine shop, making prototypes and you can instantly test your ideas. An ideal day is about 50% computer time and 50% making stuff. Lately my day also includes cleaning and organizing gear in the lab – we often have kits and instruments coming back from sea trips that needs to rejoin the lab space.

I love the "making stuff part best though. All our machines you have to learn a decent amount to use safely, thus anything you want to make also becomes sort of a puzzle of trying to figure out how to make it, how to secure the part in the machine, what tools to use etcetera. That always stays interesting to me. It’s also exciting when we get parts back from the campus machine shop and get to start assembling things like a big Lego set. I wish I could say I went surfing every morning too, but that doesn’t always happen. I do love lunch surf breaks though.

What drew you to Scripps? 
I grew up on the east coast so Woods Hole [Oceanographic Institution, WHOI] was always a cool thing we had over there, it would be in the paper and on the news. I did a summer internship there between my junior and senior year of college. That project was all about physical oceanography and fieldwork, and I was mindblown that one could do that as a job. Some of the people I worked with at WHOI mentioned Scripps, and I figured I was ready for some warmer weather, so I looked into jobs here.

Is there a particular scientist/person/engineer that inspires you?
Oh, that would have to be Mike, our senior engineer, any day of the week. He has a background in electrical engineering, but he can pretty much make anything and learn anything overnight by watching YouTube videos. His ability to constantly tinker and keep a problem going in his brain, even when he’s sleeping or not working, it is pretty amazing. He’s very well rounded in his engineering skillset which is something I aspire to - not to mention his witty jokes 

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
Everybody knows I love Lego, like a lot. I’m also a big fan of turtles, but that’s perhaps also a well-established fact. Well, not everyone knows that I was president of the Origami Society at MIT. My favorite things to make are the modular builds, for example when you make a sphere, and you first make 30 small pieces and interlock them all to form a bigger piece. I prefer that over super intricate, single-sheet-of-paper projects. I once was part of a team that made 400 pieces that were put together to a big sphere that ended up in the local museum.

Written by Kerstin Bergentz

MOD Postdoc Spotlight: Alejandra Sanchez-Rios

What is your background and what are you studying/working on now? 
I did my undergrad in oceanography at Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, in Ensenada, Mexico, which is about two hours south of San Diego. That was a five year degree and after that I worked for a year as a research assistant at CICESE (Centro de Investigacion Cientifica y de Educacion Superior de Ensenada) in the physical oceanography department which is what made me want to continue doing physical oceanography. I did my PhD at Oregon State with Kipp Sherman and then I moved to Taiwan and did almost two years on a fellowship over there, working primarily with coastal models. Now I’m in MOD and here I’m looking at temperature and salinity variability along isopycnals, how they’re changing with time and how they relate to mixing depending on what physical features are present.

What keeps you excited and interested in working in the field of oceanography?
That’s a very interesting question, I go back and forth with this a lot. When you’re doing a lot of writing this often comes up. I think there are two main things though. Curiosity is the first one, I just love figuring out how nature works. The ocean is not static, it has so many different processes going on and they all influence climate and us humans and I just love to discover all of that. The second thing is contributing to the human understanding of our planet. It can be hard sometimes when you’re working with something that is so detailed, which a lot of us in MOD do, to find the meaning and motivation for it, what’s the bigger picture? But when you reframe it in terms of contributing a piece of the puzzle of collective human knowledge of our planet, how it changes with climate and how we can mitigate that, it makes more sense. I am starting to think about the third step of this too, which would be how to use our improved understanding to help people impacted by a changing climate which is something that feels very meaningful to me and keeps me excited.

Fast CTD deployment during NORSE 2022.

When you were a kid, did you expect to be a scientist? 
When I was a kid I wanted to be a biologist. I used to go to the San Diego Zoo as a child and absolutely loved it. I saw myself as a zookeeper and I wanted to do something related to biology. That’s how I ended up in oceanography, thinking it was really marine biology (which it is not really) and here we are…

Were there any particular things from your childhood that drew you to study the ocean? 
My parents took me to the ocean a lot as a kid and I think I always felt very comfortable in and around the ocean because of that. We often went to the aquarium and the ocean have always just felt familiar and a big part of my life. Though what made me particularly interested in marine sciences was high school teacher of mine who was an oceanographer. She taught biology and geography and always included a lot of the oceans in her classes which opened my eyes to this being something you could study at university.

What skills or abilities do you think are useful when thinking about going into oceanography in graduate school or working as an oceanographer?
What comes to mind right away, which is probably reflective of where I am in my own life at the moment, is storytelling. Being able to construct a story. I think we are generally good at investigating why’s and hypotheses, but putting it in a compelling way is hard. And it may seem like “soft science”, but I truly believe that there’s an art to being able to tell a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, even in a scientific journal, and to be able to capture your audience and convince them of something. That is a useful skill I wish I had started working on earlier in my academic career. And then of course there are more “hard skills” like coding, you can rarely get too much of that, and good communication skills are really important too.

What does a typical work-day look like for you? 
Oh, that really depends on what kind of mood I’m in. My ideal typical day would be to wake up and have some coffee. I like to read something first thing in my day that puts me in the mood for science, something that inspires me and gets me thinking about what I’m doing. What that is depends on what project I’m working on, but I have a list of papers I’m working my way through. Then, if I’m in a writing mode, I’d like to put in at least one hour of writing in early on. Sometimes when I have some flow that means I write a whole page or two, and sometimes that means I have to fight to even get two sentences on paper, but it’s about being consistent, although I’m not always good at being consistent.

Then I try to dedicate some time to look at data. There’s a lot of organizing of data that needs to happen before you can even start making figures and think about science questions. I also spend a lot of time thinking about structuring data in general. How do we store it efficiently, where, how to make it accessible to people et cetera. Emails unfortunately take up some time each day too. Looking for opportunities after I’m done with this postdoc here at Scripps is also something I do on some days. Meetings, seminars, and socializing with colleagues is something I try to do most weeks too. It’s important to not forget about the social aspect of academic work which can sometimes be quite lonely when you’re sat there in front of your computer most of the time.

Alejandra Sanchez-Rios, Devon Northcott and Jen MacKinnon doing fieldwork in the North Atlantic.

What drew you to work at Scripps? 
Well, I knew Jen MacKinnon from past fieldwork and conferences, and I really liked the projects she was involved in but I did not see a post-doc position in the MOD lab advertised at the time. Long story short, I ended up applying for a postdoc position at SIO that was more in the realm of atmospheric sciences. Many things factored in there, including that I wanted to be close to home since my parents live in Tijuana and I had lived far away (Oregon and Taiwan) for many years. During the interview process the person I was supposed to work with said that I looked like a good match for the MOD group with my background in observations as well as models of rapid dynamical processes. I set up a meeting with Jen and we talked and I was so excited about the kind of work that happens in MOD. With the help of Jen we wrote a proposal to work together and I applied for a fellowship at UCSD. I got it and here we are.

Is there a particular scientist or person that inspires you?
That is a very good question. I think I’ve been very lucky with my advisors which have all been very inspiring people that have pushed me in a very good way to be better. They’ve all understood me and seen me in a very human way which I’ve appreciated.

Big picture inspiration though, there are some activists/writers that are doing amazing work in general. One is Loretta J. Ross. She works in reproductive rights justice, and even though she does nothing related to oceanography she started the discussion about intersectionality that made me really start to understand how different things are connected, how you can’t devaluate any part of the equation because they’re all in balance. That also helps remind me when I’m doing science that nothing is completely objective that nothing is unrelated, the human part is as important as the scientific part. That grounds me as an oceanographer, to never let go of the whole picture and stay in my bubble of “oh, the only thing that matters is geostrophy” or whatever. I highly recommend reading some of Ross’ work, she’s able to be vulnerable and share her story but still be very much in an academic setting. 

Anna Savage and Alejandra doing fieldwork aboard the R/V Armstrong 2021.

Do you have a fun fact that you'd like to share that not everyone knows about you? 
Well, a pretty fun fact is that by pure luck and coincidence I ended up, on my first oceanographic cruise ever, getting to go down in HOV Alvin [a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution submersible]. My advisor at the time had a lot of time booked in ALVIN so he managed to take all his students down and I think it was on my 22nd birthday that I got the gift of going down 300m below the surface of the ocean.

Text and photos by Kerstin Bergentz