Introduction to Ocean Circulation and Modeling

Avijit Gangopadhyay, PhD, is Professor at the School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he served as the Interim Dean and Associate Dean for seven years. Prof. Gangopadhyay holds a B.Tech (Naval Architecture) from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, M.Tech (Applied Mechanics) from IIT Delhi, and a PhD (Ocean Engineering) from the University of Rhode Island. He was a Research Associate at Harvard University and a Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory before joining UMass Dartmouth. Professor Gangopadhyay is currently the Samudragupta Chair Professor (Ministry of Earth Sciences) of the Center for Oceans, Rivers and Land Sciences (CORAL) at IITKGP. He has held multiple visiting, distinguished and honorary professorships at Harvard, the Institute of Oceanography of the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), the Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore), IITKGP, and IIT, Bhubaneswar. He has served as advisor to more than 20 MS and PhD students who have gone on to fill significant positions in the global ocean science community. Professor Gangopadhyay's research interests and contributions include operational ocean modeling and data assimilation, basin-scale climate-related modeling, multiscale multidisciplinary data-model synthesis studies and the dynamics of western boundary currents. Professor Gangopadhyay has led the development of feature-oriented regional modeling systems (FORMS) in many different oceanic regions around the world, including the western North Atlantic (Gulf Stream, Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, Mid-Atlantic Bight), Brazil Current System (Brazil Current and its eddies and subsurface flows), North Brazil Current Rings, California Current System, Kuroshio, Strait of Sicily and Arabian Sea. He has authored more than fifty peer-reviewed publications in international journals and books so far and is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the Oceanography Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Professor Gangopadhyay initiated and helped implement the SMAST-IOUSP Dual-Degree PhD program and the summer undergraduate international internship program for IITs at UMass Dartmouth. Professor Gangopadhyay has been instrumental in establishing CORAL at IIT Kharagpur and has been associated with the School for Earth, Ocean and Climate Sciences and the Innovation Center for Climate Change at IIT Bhubaneswar from their inception.