PhD in Environmental Science and Engineering, California Institute of Technology (2019)
Bio and Interests
Postdoctoral associate Xiaozhou Ruan is a physical oceanographer. He has worked on different projects involving (1) in-situ observations using autonomous robots in the polar ocean; (2) theoretical and modeling aspects of physical oceanography with a primary focus on boundary layer dynamics and near-wall turbulence. He is currently working in the Ferrari group investigating how the small-scale turbulence in the oceanic bottom boundary layers affects the large-scale abyssal overturning circulation and climate. This work will provide insights on how the abyssal ocean stores and redistributes carbon, heat and nutrients over centennial and millennial timescales. He uses a combination of theoretical fluid dynamics, numerical modeling and analysis of observations to tackle these problems.
Xiaozhou received his PhD in Environmental Science and Engineering with a minor degree in Applied and Computational Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 2019.