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News


From Cambridge, Mass. to Cambridge, UK

Graduate students Andrew Rzeznik and Margaux Filippi will be participating in the 2016 Summer School for Fluid Dynamics of Sustainability and the Environment, held in September in Cambridge, UK. The school is a collaborative endeavour between the University of Cambridge in the UK and Ecole Polytechnique in France.


New group members

Dr. Alireza Hadjighasem, our new postdoc, will join us in August 2016 from ETH Zürich. He will work on Lagrangian Coherent Structures. Jade Coulin will visit from Ecole des Mines to work on sediment laden plumes in stratified environments with application to dewatering plumes from dee-sea mining. Two other PhD students at MIT, Keaton Burns, in the Physics department, and Andrew Rzeznik, in the Mathematics department, will be working with the group too, performing numerical modeling of the plumes.


Deep-sea mining meeting in the Azores

Prof. Peacock recently participated in the Ventbase 2016 June meeting in the Azores with a view to developing protocols for limiting the environmental impact of dewatering plumes generated by deep-sea mining activities. The group will prepare a working document to be distributed to the ocean community, including the International Seabed Authority..


Cruise around Palau

Prof. Peacock and Dr. Musgrave recently participated in a research cruise to Palau in the Pacific Ocean. They deployed Pressure Inverted Echo Sounder's (PIES), an instrument for measuring average sound speed in the water column, to detect internal waves as part of the Flow Encountering Abrupt Topography (FLEAT) experiment.


ONR Arctic Ocean Projects

We have received new funding from the Office of Naval Research to participate in the Stratified Ocean Dynamics of the Arctic (SODA) project. The project will involve procurement of Current and Pressure Recording Inverted Echo Sounders (C-PIES) with pop-up data telemetry capabilities. An array of between 6 and 11 instruments will be deployed across the Canada Basin and Chukchi Sea to monitor near-inertial wave activity and heat transport.


MIT NSF Hazards-SEES Kickoff Meeting (January 2016)

With Prof. Pierre Lermusiaux from the MSEAS Lab, Prof. Peacock is co-organizing a workshop at MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to launch the NSF Hazards-SEES research program.


New papers (January 2016)

We have several new publications just published or coming out in journals such as Nature, the Journal of Fluid Mechanics and Physics of Fluids. Check out our publications page for more details.


Latest projects

Deep Sea Mining: we have just received MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI) seed funding to study the impacts of Deep Sea Mining, a very pressing issue for the global oceans.

Headed to Palau: in summer 2016, we will be headed to Palau as part of the ONR FLEAT program, where will use PIES technology to make field measurements of the impacts of stratified flow encountering the abrupt topography of the Mariana Ridge system.

We have received a new $3 million NSF Hazards-SEES grant to develop Lagrangian data analysis methods for the application to real world ocean hazards problems. This work will be a collaboration with WHOI, Virginia Tech., UC Berkeley, the US Coastguard and SINTEF, among others. The project will culminate with a field experiment off Martha’s Vineyard in summer 2018.


Arctic Ocean

After recently returning from the ArticMix cruise, we have received new ONR funding for field experiments in the Arctic Ocean using CPIES technology. Field studies will take place from 2017 to 2020.

Read more about Prof. Peacock's cruise R/V Sikuliaq: ArcticMix blog


New group members

Welcome to Dr. Ruth Musgrave, Rohit Supekar and Boyu Fan, our new lab members! [more about them]


Dr. Sasan John Ghaemsaidi defended his PhD thesis and is traveling the world (November 2015)

Congratulations to Dr. Sasan John Ghaemsaidi on a successful PhD defense! His thesis combined theoretical investigations and beautiful experiments on the dynamics of internal waves. Sasan, after defending his thesis in August, just returned from spending a month working with Prof. Jae Hun Park and Prof. Manikandan Mathur in Seoul, South Korea and Chennai, India, respectively.


iModes is online

Don't forget to check iModes, a Matlab tool that calculates the model content of an internal wave field [read more and download softare].


Maha completed her Master's (February 2015)

Congratulations to Maha Haji who completed her Master’s thesis investigating the topographic scattering of low-mode internal tides! Her work utilized two-dimensional analytical methods and developed new modal decomposition techniques. These were then used to determine scattering characteristics of the internal tide at the Line Islands Ridge from field data collected during the EXperiment on Internal Tide Scattering (EXITS) field study.


APS Presentations (November 2014)

Maha's talk titled “Assessing the importance of internal tide scattering in the deep ocean” presented results from six moored profilers of the EXperiment on Internal Tide Scattering (EXITS) field study. EXITS was conducted in 2010-2011 and sought to examine the role of topographic scattering at the Line Islands Ridge in the Central Tropical Pacific.

Margaux's presentation was on her investigations of the braid theory approach to detect coherent structures in oceanic flows. Her talk included the results from her laboratory experiment and an overview of the field work she conducted over the summer, which mainly consisted of the release of floaters offshore Martha's Vineyard.


Sasan presented two talks on internal waves: the first on their behavior descending a double-diffusive staircase and the second on their penetration into an evanescent layer via parametric subharmonic instability.

Séverine talked about particle dispersion phenomena in chaotic flows and their dependence to intrinsic properties of the particles, such as their buoyancy, size or shape. She showed that in a 2-D flow field, segregation between particles of different shape can be characterized by determining the underlying Lagrangian Coherent Structures.

Finally, Prof. Peacock was a featured speaker of the conference and held an invited session: In pursuit of internal waves.


LCS Workshop (Sept 2013)

Prof. Peacock is co-organizing a workshop on Lagrangian Coherent Structures, to be held at the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) during the week of Sept 22nd-27th. The meeting will focus on how new mathematical methods can be used to detect the existence of transport barriers in geophysical flows.


New Lab (March 2013)

We have a brand new lab space with state of the art facilities to support our experimental research. The new ENDLab space officially opens in April 2013 and we already have several experiments planned to get things up and running.


Vietnam (December 2012)

Michael Allshouse and Prof. Peacock spent two weeks in Nha Trang and Hanoi, Vietnam teaching a short course on Lagrangian Coherent Structures, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. A total of around 40 students and faculty attended the class.


Surfing the Glory (September 2012)

Prof. Peacock travelled to the remote outpost of Burketown in Queensland, Australia to participate with Prof. Jorg Hacker of Flinders University in a field study of the Morning Glory cloud. Several Glories came through during this time, and as fortune would have it the biggest of them all came on the last day (the phenomenon is quite rare, so even seeing one is considered good fortune). Here are some photos from the experience.


Mani Mathur (September 2012)

Congratulations to our former graduate student Mani Mathur, who just started his new faculty position at IIT Madras!


New Lab Members (August 2012)

We have three new group members in 2012/2013. Maha Haji has joined us from Berkeley and is a graduate student working on internal tides, Matthieu Leclair has come from Université Joseph Fourier and is performing LCS and internal wave research, and finally Zaïm Ouazzani has taken a visiting position in the group, also coming from Université Joseph Fourier, and will be working on the dynamics of the morning glory cloud.


Coherent Structures (May 2011)

Prof. Peacock is co-organizing an NSF funded workshop of coherent structures at the Lorentz Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands. The workshop has attracted many of the leading researchers in the field and will take place in May 2011. One focus of the workshop is the latest development in the field of Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCS). Details of the workshop can be found here [link].


Cruises (April 2011)

Several members of the ENDLAB will be participating in two upcoming cruises. The first, in April 2011, is the NSF EXITS cruise being organized by Shaun Johnston (SIO), which will be studying internal tide scattering at the Line Islands Ridge south of Hawaii. The cruise will be on the research vessel Kilo Moana. The second, in August 2011, is the ONR IWISE cruise studying the Luzon Strait in the South China Sea. For this project we are also teaming up with researchers from National Taiwan University.


Les Houches (February 2011)

Prof. Peacock recently co-organized a one week workshop on Geophysical and Astrophysical Internal Waves at the Ecole de Physique des Houches, near Chamonix, France. The workshop drew leading faculty, postdocs and students from around the world, as far afield a Korea.


Hayashi (January 2011)

Prof. Peacock and Matthieu Mercier recently went to Taiwan to meet with their collaborators at National Taiwan University in Taipei. The research group in Taiwan is led by Prof. TY Tang.


Vietnam (December 2010)

Prof. Peacock was recently a member of an ONR scientific party who visited Vietnam to discuss important research questions in the East Sea of Vietnam. The first three days were spent at a scientific meeting and then the scientific party attended the Joint Committee Meeting in Hanoi.


Coriolis (September 2010)

Members of the ENDLab teamed up with researchers Thierry Dauxois (ENS de Lyon) and Joel Sommeria and Louis Gostiaux (LEGI) to perform an unprecedented three-month laboratory experiment on internal tide generation. A replica of the Luzon Ridge system in the South China Sea was constructed and the tidal conditions of the region were replicated. This was achieved with invaluable help of the Samuel Vibaud and Henri Didelle, as well as some sound scientific input from Prof. Karl Helrich.


Graduation (September 2010)

Mani celebrating at the Stade Gerland with Thierry, Tom and Karl.

Congratulations to Dr. Mani Mathur on successfully defending his Ph.D. Mani’s thesis addressed the generation of internal waves using a novel wave generator and the interaction of internal waves with non-uniform density stratifications. The experimental research was complemented by theoretical studies using a variety of analytical techniques. Mani now has a joint postdoc position at Ecole de Physique, Paris and LEGI, Grenoble and is perfecting his French.


Sailing on Diffusion (April 2010)

How can an object be propelled without any moving parts? New experimental and numerical results show how energy can be extracted from molecular diffusion to produce spontaneous propulsion. These results have potential significance for environmental and biological transport. When a density-stratified fluid encounters a sloping boundary, diffusion alters the fluid density adjacent to the boundary, producing spontaneous flow. We have found that diffusion-driven flow can be harnessed as a remarkable means of propulsion, acting as a diffusion-engine that extracts energy from microscale diffusive processes to propel macroscale objects. This mechanism has implications for a environmental systems.

Read the paper [link].

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LCS (January 2010)

The latest issue of CHAOS is a special issue on Lagrangian Coherent Structures that is co-edited by Prof. Peacock and Prof. Dabiri (Caltech). This edition presents a collection of papers by leading researchers in the field that summarizes the state-of-the-art in this exciting and growing research field. The special issue was recently featured in both The New York Times and The Economist.


JFM cover (January 2010)

The latest work on internal wave beams by graduate student Manikandan Mathur was recently featured on the cover of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. This work helps explain the apparent vanishing of an internal wave beam generated at the Hawaiian Ridge. This is getting to be a good habit, as Mani also made the cover of PRL with his last publication. Congratulations Mani.


Morning Glory (January 2010)

Prof. Peacock had a very successful visit to the Gulf of Carpentaria in October 2009, managing to see three Morning Glory clouds, and surfing one of the clouds in a vintage Auster aircraft. Here are a few pictures from the trip.


Banff (January 2010)

From April 4 to April 9, leading researchers on Internal Waves will converge on the Banff International Research Stations (BIRS) for the workshop "Coordinated Mathematical Modeling of Internal Waves," being organized by Prof. Peacock, Prof. Balmforth (UBC), Prof. Sutherland (U. Alberta) and Prof. Ogilvie (Cambridge). The goal of the workshop is to bring together astronomers, atmospheric scientists, oceanographers, physicists, engineers and applied mathematicians to discuss their latest work on these topics. For more details of the meeting, click here. [link]


Invited talks (September 2009)

Prof. Peacock will be in Europe at the start of October giving invited seminars at Ladhyx (Paris), DTU (Copenhagen) and the University of Cambridge.


Fall teaching (September 2009)

Prof. Peacock will be teaching his intro Nonlinear Dynamics course 2.050J in the Fall. This course is designed to introduce undergraduates to the basic concepts of maps, flows, chaos and bifurcations, among many other things. The course will involve demos and use of java applets to help illustrate the ideas.


Graduation (August 2009)

© 2009 Thomas Peacock
Paula working hard on
the IWAP cruise off
Hawaii in June 2006.

Congratulations to Dr. Paula Echeverri on her recent and successful defense of her Ph.D. thesis on "Internal Tide Generation by Tall Ocean Ridges". The thesis involved a combination of theory, experiment and processing of ocean data, and has produced three JFM papers (one accepted, two submitted). Paula joined the group in 2004 after her undergraduate degree in Aero/Astro at MIT, and completed her Masters in summer 2006. During her time in the ENDLab Paula went to sea twice, to Hawaii and the South China Sea, and ultimately graduated from the MIT/WHOI Joint Program. We're very sorry to see her go, and very proud of what she has achieved. Hasta luego, Paula.


USNCTAM 2010 (August 2009)

The deadline for abstracts for USNCTAM 2010 is Oct 15th 2009. Prof. Peacock and Prof. Rowley (Princeton) are co-chairing a session on Nonlinear Dynamics, for which submissions are welcome. The meeting is perhaps the most prestigious US conference on Mechanics, and is held only once every four years. Contact Prof. Peacock if you are interested and need more specific details. Here is the link to the conference website. [link] Contact Prof. Peacock if you are interested and need more specific details.

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Welcome New Members (Augugst 2009)

Two new members have joined the group; Sasan Saidi (Masters) and Arezoo Ardekani (Postdoc). Sasan recently graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and will be working on internal waves. Arezoo completed her Ph.D. at UC Irvine and received a Schlumerger Faculty of the Future Fellowship; and luckily for us she chose to come to work in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Arezoo will be working on a new form of propulsion in aquatic environments. We also eagerly anticipate the arrival of Matthieu Mericer (Postdoc) from ENS de Lyon, who will be joining the group in Summer 2010. There is the small matter of him finishing his Ph.D. thesis first though, so knuckle down Matthieu and make sure to keep Thierry happy.


Discovery Channel Filming (August 2009)

A spectacular image of the
Morning Glory of the Gulf of
Carpentaria, obtained from a
quick search on Google.

At the end of September, Prof. Peacock will be heading to Burketown in North Australia to surf the Morning Glory in a glider, as part of an upcoming documentary on internal waves. The morning glory is one of the most spectacular celestial phenomenon, and more can be learned about it at this website. [link]

This follows previous shoots in the South China Sea and Western Australia. The documentary is scheduled for completion and broadcast in 2010.


Invited talks (May/June 2009)

A busy start to the summer, with Prof. Peacock giving invited seminars at Caltech, UCSD, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UC Santa Cruz, and also one of the invited talks at the Gordon Conference on Nonlinear Science.


Separation is so tough (October 2008)

© 2009 Thomas Peacock
The cover image from the MIT
website, showing a slightly altered
flow separation spike visualized
using green fluorescent dye.

Congratulations to Matthew Weldon, after his recent Masters graduation, for the acceptance of his paper on unsteady separation in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. The paper presents exciting new experimental work that demonstrates the ability of a new approach to unsteady separation based on ideas from dynamical systems theory. The paper was featured on the cover of the MIT website and the press release was one of the top three accessed on the MIT website in 2008. [link] This work was also featured in Physics World and La Recherche, and will be in an upcoming article in the New York Times. Matthew is now working in the Fluid Dynamics Labs at Penn State University.

Read the article. [link]
Read the news story released by MIT [link].

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The Lagrangian skeleton of turbulence (March 2007)

© 2009 Thomas Peacock
An MIT take on the
visualization of the
chaotic tangle underlying
a turbulent fluid flow.

Mani Mathur, from the ENDLab, has published his work on uncovering Lagrangian Coherent Structures in an experimental data set of turbulent flow. Mani's work provides a new robust methodology for finding these hidden structures that govern mixing and transport in fluid flows. This research was featured on the cover of the MIT website, and made the cover of PRL. The associated press release can be found here. [link]

Read the article. [link]