Ocean Engineer Earns Funding for Vietnam Coastal Project

MELBOURNE, FLA.—Steven Jachec, Florida Institute of Technology assistant professor of ocean engineering and a 2011 Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator, recently received a $303,000 grant from the ONR. The grant funds work in coastal oceanography and coastal resources that also involves Vietnamese researchers.

Jachec will collaborate with U.S. and Vietnamese scientists to better understand the interaction of ambient coastal ocean flows, including internal waves, with Mekong River Delta outflows in South Vietnam. He will team with observers and theorists while leading the numerical modeling portion of this work, using high-performance computing such as Graphics Processor Units (GPUs), made popular by the video gaming industry.

The basic research goals include improving the understanding of large river discharges during monsoon conditions and how they impact the coastal ocean circulation. This work will form the Ph.D. dissertation topic for a Florida Tech student mentored by Jachec. In addition to research, Jachec will teach numerical flow modeling workshops in Vietnam during summer 2014.

“I am very grateful to the Office of Naval Research for the opportunity to be part of this valuable research initiative,” said Jachec.