Interdisciplinary Research and Training at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Program

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The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (GFD) Summer Program began in 1959 at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution with the aim of introducing a then relatively new topic in mathematical physics, geophysical fluid dynamics, to graduate students in physical sciences. It has been held each summer since and promotes an exchange of ideas among the many distinct fields that share a common interest in the dynamics of rotating, stratified fluids with similar properties and dynamics as the oceans. It is a ten-week program of interdisciplinary research and training entering its 6th decade of activity. By its very nature, the GFD program promotes the dissemination and exchange of scientific results among researchers from different backgrounds and at different career stages. New techniques from different disciplines are readily transferred across disciplinary borders, and a culture of unity and synergy between research and training is passed on to the fellows. The program often is the crucial mechanism by which the fellows meet prospective employers at the postdoctoral level and beyond, thus broadening their scientific network. The GFD program has global appeal and in the past, has attracted extremely talented young scientists to the US for postdoctoral research and academic positions through exposure to the US research community at a key formative moment in their careers. The topics selected for the proposed five-year cycle have strong broader impacts both in the disciplinary fields and to society at large. In a nutshell, the GFD Program acts as a conduit through which recent mathematical advances can improve the description of the global climate system, an issue of vital and important societal concern. Finally, the annual GFD Public Lecture targeted toward a general audience introduces the local community to the science of GFD.The GFD program provides a uniquely stimulating and supportive environment for cross-pollination of ideas and approaches among a wide range of subjects including applied mathematics, oceanography, fluid dynamics, geophysics, geology, meteorology, astrophysics, planetary science, engineering, and physics. Research and graduate training go hand in hand: a small group of outstanding graduate students (typically ten) known as "fellows" are charged with conducting advanced projects for the bulk of the summer and presenting their results in both oral and written reports during the final week. The fellows' research projects are individually or jointly supervised by members of the GFD staff -- a group of summer-long participants who are academics from the diverse fields represented at GFD -- and thereby often catalyze new long-lasting and productive collaborations among multiple advisors from varying fields and the fellows, and indeed among the fellows themselves. Furthermore, the fellows' research horizons are naturally broadened by working in such a concentrated fashion, both in terms of exposure to different research fields from those on which their theses are based, and in terms of the exposure to different techniques (mathematical, numerical or experimental) from those they have previously employed. The experience of working across traditional academic boundaries is a central, and highly valuable part of the training in the GFD program, and prepares the fellows well for future academic careers in emergent research fields. Each year, the program has a focus on a "theme" relevant to geophysical fluid dynamics, often selected to address an emergent key research challenge with immediate societal relevance and multidisciplinary character. The summer opens with two weeks of intensive principal lectures on the theme, typically given by two or more acknowledged experts. Thereafter, daily seminars are given by invited visitors and the staff. For 2019-2023 the proposed themes are: Stratified Turbulence and Ocean Mixing Processes, Data-driven Modeling in GFD, Exoplanetary GFD, Multiscale Modeling: Links to the Ocean Submesoscale, and Variational Methods in GFD.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.