Group
Interested in joining?
Although I have funds to pay for students, bringing your own funding always looks good on a CV! Some of these links explain a few possibilities. The deadlines are only indicative, and prospective members should contact me well in advance.
Undergraduate students: I do not accept applications to volunteer! This practice is illegal in Ontario, and deeply unfair to students of merit who cannot afford to work for free. To do undergraduate research in my group, you need to either earn credits (via e.g., PHY478/9 or ESC499 at UofT) or financial support via competitive awards. See here for a comprehensive list of opportunities and up-to-date detail on procedures, deadlines, etc. In particular,
- Citizens and permanent residents of Canada can explore the various avenues offered by NSERC (in particular, check out the Undergraduate Student Research Awards, and our Department's page about it).
- The UofT Centre for Global Change Science (CGCS) offers competitive summer internships.
- UofT students: look up "University of Toronto Excellence Award" (link may vary from year to year). Open to student visa holders, applications due late March/early April. I don't really know how it works, so, if you are interested, email me and mention this award explicitly.
- UofT 2nd year Physics students: look into the Natalia Krasnopolskaia Memorial Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF).
- Engineering Science Students at UofT can participate in the Engineering Science Research Opportunities Program (ESROP).
Graduate students: prospective graduate students have to go through the regular application and admissions process of the Department of Physics. Check out the website to figure out how.
Post-docs:
- You can also explore the various avenues offered by NSERC: English/français. Once again, it is easier to be a Canadian Citizen or Permanent Resident, but international applicants might want to look at the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship. The latter is extremely competitive, to the point that it is mostly a waste of time and energy. The process for applying starts sometime in July.
- The Faculty of Arts & Science at UofT offers (very competitive) post-doctoral fellowships. Deadline: Winter, changes often.
Current members
Graduate students
![]() |
Cécile Le Dizès (Sep. 2022 - now) (Dipl. Ing. ISAE-Supaéro '22) is a doctoral student at the Institut de Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse, supervised by Dr. Matthieu Mercier, Prof. Olivier Thual, and myself, albeit in an unofficial capacity. She is working three-dimensional radiation of internal tides by arbitrary topographies. |
![]() |
Erin Atkinson (Sep. 2022 – now; erin.atkinson -at- mail.utoronto.ca) (Univ. Cambridge '22) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Physics at UofT. They are working on the role of ageostrophic instabilities in the process of ocean frontogenesis. |
![]() |
Fabiola Trujano Jiménez (Sep. 2019 – now; ftrujano -at- physics.utoronto.ca) (Univ. Nacional Autónoma de México '19) is a PhD candidate in the department of physics at UofT. She is working on understanding sub-surface submesoscale instabilities. Work done in collaboration with Dr. Varvara E. Zemskova (Oregon State U.). |
Undergraduate students
![]() |
Yasaman Yazdani (May 2024 - now; yasaman.yazdani -at- mail.utoronto.ca) completed her second year as a Physics Specialist with a Minor in Mathematics, here at UofT. A recipient of an NSERC USRA award, then a supervised reading course student, she investigates how ice cubes melt in water with various rotation rates and salinity values, in collaboration with Dr. Erica Rosenblum (U. Toronto) |
Nicolas Grisouard (he/him/his)
![]() |
I received my Physics B.Sc. in 2005 from the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan (since renamed ENS Paris-Saclay), and my Ph.D. in Earth, Universe and Environment Sciences in 2010 from the Université de Grenoble (since renamed Université Grenoble Alpes). I then did post-docs at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in New York City and Stanford University in the Bay Area, until joining the Dept. of Physics at the University of Toronto in 2015. I am primarily interested in fundamental dynamics of small-scale internal waves and internal tides, their interactions with balanced (in the general sense, not limited to geostrophy) flows, and ageostrophic instabilities of submesoscale flows. |
Alumni
Post-docs
![]() |
Han Wang (Sept. 2020 - Mar. 2022; hannnwangus -at- gmail.com) is a post-doctoral scientist. She graduated in 2020 from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU. Supported by the Canadian Space Agency, she studied methods to disentangle internal tides from vortical flows from sea surface height signals, in preparation for the SWOT mission. As of May 2022, is a post-doctoral scientist in the School of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. |
![]() |
Christos Papoutsellis (Jan. 2020 - Jan. 2021) was a post-doctoral scientist, affiliated at the Institut de Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse (FR), co-supervised by Dr. Matthieu Mercier. He developed a semi-analytical model of the internal tide radiated by arbitrary topographies. Prior to working on internal tides, he was specializing in non-linear surface wave dynamics. He earned in his doctoral degree from NTU Athens in 2016, and worked as a post-doc between the Paris area and Marseille. He then went on to do another post-doc at ENSTA Brest and as of May 2024, he is Assistant Research Scientist at UC San Diego. |
![]() |
Varvara E. Zemskova (Aug. 2019 - Aug. 2021; barbara.zemskova -at- utoronto.ca) was a post-doctoral scientist. She earned her doctoral degree in 2019 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Trained as an applied mathematician and marine scientist, she specializes in theoretical and idealized numerical studies of the ocean's energy content, Southern Ocean dynamics, the biogeochemistry of polar oceans, and submesoscale instabilities. She then worked as a research scientist at Oregon State University, and as of May 2024, she is about to join the faculty of the Applied Mathematics department at the University of Waterloo. |
Graduate students
![]() |
Jeff Uncu (Sep. 2017 - Aug. 2024; jeffrey.uncu -at- mail.utoronto.ca) first joined our group as an undegraduate researcher, then graduated from UofT as a Physics Specialist in June 2018. Long story short, he wrote a PhD thesis entitled "The Scattering of Internal Tides by Balanced Flows". Work was done in collaboration with Drs. Han Wang (then at Edinburgh) and Kaushik Srinivasan (UCLA). He now works for TD Securities. |
![]() |
Mikhail Schee (Sep. 2018 - Aug. 2024; mschee -at- physics.utoronto.ca) (BSc Univ. Minnesota Twin Cities '18) wrote a PhD thesis entitled "Thermohaline staircases in the Arctic Ocean: Detection, evolution, and interaction". Work done in collaboration with Drs. Erica Rosenblum (U. Toronto) and Jonathan Lilly (Planetary Sci. Institute). |
![]() |
Kelly Foran (Sep. 2016 - Aug. 2017) (BSc Mount Allison University '16, MSc UofT '17) wrote her Master's thesis on the propagation of internal waves through density staircases such as those found in the Arctic Ocean. |
Undergraduate students
![]() |
Jewel Cao (May-Aug. 2024; jewel.cao -at- mail.utoronto.ca) was a third-year Physics Specialist, here at UofT and a recipient of a Centre for Global Change Science award. She worked on numerically modelling three-dimensional radiation of internal tides by topographies. |
![]() |
Haoyuan Shi (Jan.-Apr. 2024) was a 4th-year undergraduate Mathematics and Physics student at the University of Toronto. For his PHY478 research project, he studyed how ice cubes melt in rotating tanks, and what influence the salinity of the water has on the melting. Work done in collaboration with Dr. Erica Rosenblum and Tianxing Zheng (below). As of May 2024, he is about to join the graduate program in Physics at McMaster University. |
![]() |
Tianxing (Nick) Zheng (Sep. 2023 – Apr. 2024; nick.zheng -at- mail.utoronto.ca) is a 4th-year undergraduate Physics Specialist at the University of Toronto. For his PHY479 research project, he studied how ice cubes melt in rotating tanks, and what influence the salinity of the water has on the melting. Work done in collaboration with Dr. Erica Rosenblum and Haoyuan Shi (above). As of May 2024, he is about to join the graduate program in Physics at Texas A&M. |
![]() |
Yutong "Sarah" Han (May – August 2022; yutong.han -at- mail.utoronto.ca) is a 4th-year Physics and Actuarial science student at UofT. In co-supervision with Dr. Erica J. Rosenblum (Univ. Manitoba) and Mikhail Schee, she studied the evolution of Arctic staircases over the decades. |
![]() |
Kerryn Van Rooyen (May-Aug. 2022) was back in 2022! This time as a Centre for Global Change Science awardee. In co-supervision with Dr. Han Wang (Univ. Edinburgh) and in collaboration with Prof Brian Arbic's group (Univ. Michigan), she tested methods to improve the spectral representation of sea surface height fields created by conditional Generative Adversarial Networks. |
![]() |
Sam De Abreu (Sept. 2021 - now; sam.deabreu -at- mail.utoronto.ca) is a 4th-year Physics specialist and Mathematics minor here at UofT. Co-supervised with Dr. Erica J. Rosenblum (Univ. Manitoba) and Mikhail Schee, he studied the effect, ice keels have on mixing the mixed layer of the Arctic Ocean. |
![]() |
Rundong Zhou (Sept. 2020 - Aug. 2022; https://rundong-zhou.github.io/) was an Engineering Science student who wrote his senior thesis on developing spectral methods for computational fluid dynamics in polar coordinates and kept on working on this topic for a year. As of November 2022, he is enrolled in the Master of Science in Complex Adaptive Systems at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. |
![]() |
Rosalie Cormier (May-Aug. 2021) was a 3rd-year Physics Specialist her at UofT and a CGCS summer fellow. Co-supervised with Dr. Erica Rosenblum (Univ. Manitoba), she studied the effect, ice keels have on mixing the mixed layer of the Arctic ocean. As of Sept. 2021, she is continuing her studies at UofT. |
![]() |
Jack Farrell (May 2020 - Aug. 2021) was a 4th-year Physics Specialist here at UofT and NSERC USRA awardee. Co-supervised with Prof. T. Scaffidi, he studied electron hydrodynamics using numerical tools of geophysical fluid dynamics. As of Sept. 2021, he is a graduate student in Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. |
![]() |
Zirui (Ellen) Wan (Jan. 2020 - Aug. 2021); ellen.wan -at- mail.utoronto.ca) was a 3rd and 4th-year Physics Specialist student here at UofT. First as a PHY479 research student, she has been working on the application of deep neural networks on the biogeochemical carbon cycle in the Southern Ocean. |
![]() |
Yviel Catillejos (May-Aug. 2020) was a 2nd-year Engineering Science student here at UofT and CGCS summer fellow. Co-supervised with Dr. V. E. Zemskova, he studied the effect of double-diffusive instabilities in the mixing of oxygen. As of Sept. 2020, he is continuing his studies at UofT. |
![]() |
Kerryn Van Rooyen (May-Aug. 2020) was a 2nd-year Engineering Science student her at UofT and ESROP awardee. In co-supervision with Dr E. J. Rosenblum (Univ. Manitoba and McGill Univ.), she studied diagnostics of Arctic sea ice from CMIP and large ensemble models, observational datasets, and idealized numerical simulations. As of Sept. 2021, she is continuing her studies at UofT. |
![]() |
Heng Li (May 2019 - Aug. 2020; hengpk.li -at- mail.utoronto.ca) was a Mathematics and Physics Major here at UofT, scheduled to graduate in August 2020. First as a Centre for Global Change Science undergraduate summer fellow, then as a PHY479 research student, he worked on the idealized numerical modelling of internal wave radiation that accompanies some submesoscale frontal instabilities. |
![]() |
Sammohith Nittala (May - Aug. 2019; sammohith -at- yahoo.com) is a Mathematics and Physics co-op student from the University of British Columbia. He worked on deriving analytical models of internal tide radiation by arbitrary 3D topography. As of Sept. 2021, he is a graduate student in Physics at McGill University. |
![]() |
Nikki Rahnamaei (May - Aug. 2019) is a Physics Specialist here at UofT, scheduled to graduate in April 2020. As a PHY479 research student, she worked on diagnostics of Arctic sea ice outputs from CMIP and large ensemble climate models. She was co-supervised by Dr. E. J. Rosenblum (Univ. Manitoba). As of Sept. 2021, she is a graduate student in Atmosphere-Ocean Sciences at McGill University. |
![]() |
Tim Tian (May - Aug. 2019; tim.tian -at- mail.utoronto.ca) is a Mathematics and Physics Specialist here at UofT. As an NSERC Undergraduate Summer Research Awardee, he studied the global impact of localized near-surface processes when the hydrostatic approximation is made in numerical simulations. As of Spring 2021, he was a grduate student at the University of British Columbia. |
![]() |
Michael Poon (Apr. - May 2019; michaelkm.poon -at- mail.utoronto.ca) is a Physics and Astronomy Specialist here at UofT, scheduled to graduate in April 2021. As a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship awardee, he worked on machine learning algorithms and the disentanglement of internal tides from quasi-geostropic turbulence. As of Sept. 2021, he is a graduate student in Astronomy and Astrophysics here at UofT. |
![]() |
ZiCong (Daniel) Guo (Nov. 2017 - Apr. 2018; zc.guo -at- mail.utoronto.ca) was a 3rd-year Engineering Science student majoring in Engineering Robotics here at UofT. When he wanted to relax, he investigated the formation of double-diffusive staircases in the Arctic Ocean. His experience was made possible by the GS REX program. |
![]() |
Christian Drago (Jan. - Apr. 2018; ) was a 4th-year Physics Specialist here at UofT. Enrolled in a half-year research course, he simulated the generation of near-inertial by geostrophic currents that flow over bottom topography. In Sep. 2019, he enrolled in the Physics graduate program at the University of Waterloo, and as of Sept. 2021, he is a graduate student in Physics here at UofT. |
![]() |
Alice Nuz (Nov. 2017 - Apr. 2019; alice.nuz -at- mail.utoronto.ca) was an Engineering Science student, majoring in Engineering Mathematics, Statistics and Finance who graudated UofT in April 2019. She investigated if machine learning algorithms could help to disentangle internal tides and geostrophic turbulence from sea surface height snapshots. She then did a stint in the financial sector, and as of Sept. 2021, she was a graduate student in Civil Engineering at the New York University. |
![]() |
Binderiya Adishaa (Summer 2017, b.adishaa -at- mail.utoronto.ca) worked on Arctic Oceanography in ECCO-2 data. |
![]() |
Armanpreet Pannu (Summer 2017, arman.pannu -at- mail.utoronto.ca) worked on tidal beam scattering in pycnoclines. As of Sept. 2020, he was a PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering here at UofT. |
![]() |
James Webber (Summer 2017, james.webber -at- mail.utoronto.ca) worked on internal tide scattering by vortices in a shallow-water equation system. As of Sept. 2019, he was working for Amazon. |
![]() |
Morgan Fox (Summer 2016, morgan.b.fox -at- gmail.com) worked on frontal instabilities. As of September 2017, he was a PhD student in Nuclear Engineering at UC Berkeley. |
![]() |
Maheyer Shroff (Summer 2016, m.shroff -at- mail.utoronto.ca) worked on the generation of internal solitary waves. As of Sept. 2021, he was a PhD student in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Victoria. |
|
Japinder Nijjer (Summer 2015, jn350 -at- damtp.cam.ac.uk) worked on the decoherence of the internal tide. He is a graduate from the Engineering Science program at the University of Toronto. He then earned his Ph.D. in Jerome Neufeld's group at the Dept. of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, UK. As of Sept. 2021, he was a post-doc at Yale University. |