Our Team

Dr Erik Behren is an oceanographer with expertise that includes high resolution ocean nested modelling, global earth system modelling, bio-geochemistry modelling, Lagrangian particle tracking and passive tracer studies.

Melissa Bowen is the principal investigator of the project. She is a physical oceanographer who works on understanding the ocean from the global overturning circulation to estuaries. Over the last several decades, her main research focus is understanding how the ocean around New Zealand is changing.

Dr Charine Collins is an ocean modeller specializing in high-resolution, regional ocean modelling and biogeochemical modelling.

Alice’s focus is on investigating how organisms and ecosystems are affected by the ocean’s dynamic environment. She is particularly interested on physical/biological interactions at spatio-temporal scales ranging from few to hundreds of kilometers and a few hours to months. She’s excited to learn how our understanding of these interactions can help us design conservation and management policies that fit the dynamic nature of coastal and open ocean regions.

Julian Drake is a recent oceanography graduate from the University of Auckland with a Master of Geography. His thesis, a broad study of sea surface temperature variability in the Southwest Pacific, is closely related to the topics explored in Te Moana Mahana and was supervised by Principal Investigator Melissa Bowen.

Dr Denise Fernandez is a physical oceanographer based at Earth Sciences New Zealand (formerly NIWA). She completed her undergraduate studies at Victoria University of Wellington, majoring in geophysics and mathematics, followed by a Masters in Geophysics and then received a PhD in Physical Oceanography from the University of Auckland in 2017.

Karen FIsher is a Human Geographer interested in society-environment interactions. Her research programme is organised under the general theme: environmental governance and politics of resource use. Her research interests fall broadly under the following areas:

Marwan specializes in surface-atmosphere interactions, and has undertaken numerous research projects throughout New Zealand, the United States and Antarctica. His research interest is around modelling, simulating, measuring and analyzing atmospheric phenomena, and he uses advanced field measurement and numerical modeling techniques to tackle my research objectives.

Mike is a hydrologic and atmospheric scientist that is a strong proponent of scientific work being fully reproducible, easily testable, open-source, and extendable. He also designs and builds systems for managing large amounts of data, develops the scientific processing and analysis tools that sit on top of these systems to do the data science magic, and creates the reporting tools to present the results in the most valuable way for users. He’s had a varied career in the areas of clean(ish) freshwater science.

Jasmin is the leader of the Earth Sciences New Zealand glider team.

Dr Gabby O’Connor is an artist, transdisciplinary researcher, Antarctican, science communicator and educator. Her work operates across multiple disciplines and audiences– between contemporary art, science communication, social science and community action, and looks at different entry points to conversations to science, place and our changing climate. She frequently collaborates with scientists, other artists, researchers, policy-makers, audiences and school students, thinking beyond normal definitions of stakeholder and public. This strategy acts as an access-point for diverse communities to be part of the conversation around science with artistic methods as the delivery system.

Peter is a Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO, Australia, specialising in ocean data assimilation, ocean forecasting, ocean observing, and ocean dynamics.

Tēnā koutou, Ko Pete Russell taku ingoa, no Ngāpuhi ahau.

Rob is a physical oceanographer interested in meso- and submesoscale (1-100 km) ocean processes. His research currently focuses on oceanic front dynamics, shelf-slope exchange processes and marine heatwaves around the New Zealand coastline. He uses a combination of in-situ observations (ships, drifters and moored instruments) and satellite remote-sensing to address questions related to his research. Rob lectures in the Department of Marine Science. During his PhD at the University of Otago, he investigated the roles of bathymetry and wind forcing in controlling the physical characteristics of the Subtropical Frontal Zone in the Tasman Seas. Learn more about Rob’s current research interests below:

Craig Stevens is an oceanographer focused on the ocean’s extrema and how to measure them - the coldest/warmest, the southern-most, the fastest, the harshest waves.