Ryan Abernathey

Ryan P. Abernathey is an Associate Professor of Earth And Environmental Science at Columbia University and Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. He received his Ph.D. from MIT in 2012 and a B.A. from Middlebury College. He joined Columbia in 2013 after a postdoc at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Ryan is a physical oceanographer who studies the large-scale ocean circulation and its relationship with Earth's climate. A central theme is how ocean “mesoscale” turbulence, i.e. eddies, waves, and jets on scales of tens to hundreds of kilometers, contributes to the transport of momentum, heat, and geochemically relevant tracers. Regionally, his main focus is the Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica and links the three main ocean basis. High-resolution numerical modeling and satellite remote sensing are key tools in this research, which has led to an interest in high performance computing and big data. Prof. Abernathey has received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Ocean Sciences and an NSF CAREER award.

Prof. Abernathey is a driving force behind the Pangeo Project, an international collaboration aimed at building scalable, open-source software and infrastructure to address the needs of big-data geoscience. He is a maintainer for several open-source python packages (xarray, zarr, xgcm) and a vocal spokesperson for the importance of open-source software in scientific research.