Melissa Omand Associate Professor of Oceanography
Melissa Omand applies her training in physics and physical oceanography to examine biogeochemical and ecological processes throughout the upper ocean and twilight zone. She most enjoys designing or combining sensors, vehicles and other instrument platforms in creative ways to tackle the challenges of making measurements in deep, sometimes harsh oceanic conditions.
Current Members:
Madeline Sprague PhD. (expected 2026)
Madeline is working on the RAFOS Ocean Acoustic Monitoring Tag system. The approach combines moored underwater sound sources with small acoustic receivers embedded within the ROAM tags. By recording arrival times of the long-range sounds from the sources, the tag triangulates its position, providing a novel and highly precise method to study the motions of subsurface-dwelling marine wildlife and float instruments. Madeline's focus is to evaluate the performance and capabilities of this observational system using acoustic modeling. Her future work will involve developing the Omand Lab's MINION float and combining the ROAM tag and MINION float into one subsurface Lagrangian measurement platform.
Sarah Lang PhD. (expected 2026)
Submesoscale (<10 km) physical processes in the ocean play an important role in the climate
system and impact phytoplankton production and carbon export, yet the direct observation of vertical velocities
and biological fluxes remain challenging. Oceanic ecosystems transform at submesoscales due to vertical transport, lateral mixing, submesoscale instabilities, and biological processes. In my research, I seek to characterize these processes with multi-scale, multi-platform, high-resolution physical and biological measurements as a part of NASA’s Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics and Vertical Transport Experiment (S-MODE), an Earth Venture Suborbital-3 (EVS-3) mission. Specifically, I couple fine-scale airborne remote sensing estimates of advection and vertical velocities at the surface, hyperspectral ocean color, and corresponding in situ datasets to uncover the physical dynamics underpinning biological distributions at submesoscale fronts.
Former Members:
Alexis Johnson M.S. (2020)
Ali investigated oceanic organic carbon subduction through analysis of biogeochemical (BGC) Argo floats. She combined data analysis and global ocean models to evaluate predictors of eddy-driven subduction with a focus on the North Atlantic ocean.
Melanie Feen M.S. (2021).
Melanie is part of the NASA-led EXPORTS project to research the biological pump. Her project will link measurements from sensors deployed on the Wirewalker and remotely sensed imagery from satellites to measure biological ocean productivity.
Jackson Sugar M.S. (2021)
Jackson is designing and building Minions; Low-cost floats that will be released in swarms to image marine snow and quantify carbon export processes in the Ocean twilight zone.
Ben Grassian PhD. (2022) Co-avised with Dr. Chris Roman.
Ben uses imaging and acoustic sensing platforms to observe biological communities in the midwater environment. He is currently developing tools to derive relevant information from these systems to interrogate the linkages between local hydrography and organismal habits in an environment that is often difficult to sample over the relevant scales. His larger goals are to render novel perspectives of hidden dynamics within the plankton/nekton that link these communities to larger-scale trophic, physical, and biogeochemical processes.
Noah Walcutt M.S. (2018), PhD.
In 2018 Noah completed a MS in Oceanography at URI focused on developing underwater holographic microscopy methodology for marine ecological studies. He is now working towards a PhD in Oceanography with research that involves applying holographic techniques to the study of physical and biological interactions in the ocean. His research interests also include the development of ocean-going sensors, applying virtual reality to the practice of oceanography, and autonomous platforms