Short Bio:
Hi, I’m Nicole, but more often than not, I go by Nikki! I grew up within arm’s reach of the Atlantic Ocean, along the New Jersey coast, or as many like to refer to it, the Jersey Shore (i.e. the heart of reality TV). Frequent visits to the beach fostered my idea that watching the ocean felt akin to observing magic, I ended up here at DMCS, studying physical oceanography for my undergraduate degree.
My undergraduate time at Rutgers, working with DMCS faculty, revealed the inherent curiosity that drives the field of oceanography. So, while the spells and scrolls I saw in video games and files couldn’t feasibly be studied, I found ocean modeling to be a vessel for that same excitement and curiosity – one that I will now get to explore alongside my advisors John Wilkin and Javier Zavala-Garay for my Master’s degree. I will focus on using ocean modeling, coupled with observations, to reveal large-scale ocean dynamics, specificially in the Indonesian Throughflow and its surrounding regions, to investigate water mass transformations. My work blends numerical model analysis, mathematics, physics, and in-situ observational data to investigate marine dynamical processes. Furthermore, I hope to expand my research methods by utilizing new approaches that emerge as the field continues to evolve, and to extend my work into other areas, such as ocean forecasting.
While I love all things ocean-related, I’m also an enthusiast for pop culture, color coordination, and documentaries. I love seasonality, cats, when the name of an album is dropped in a song, and… is this where I say, long walks on the beach?