THE TEAM
Alejandra Sanchez-Rios
Dr. Alejandra Sanchez-Rios is a postdoctoral fellow in physical oceanography. She is originally from Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico where she grew up. As a kid she often went to different beach towns around the baja coast, where her dad used to work and spent a lot of time looking at the ocean. By the end of high-school she realized ocean science was a career she could pursue and enrolled in college at Ensenada Baja California State University. She has been studying the ocean since 2006, and has spent many months in a research vessel studying how the ocean currents move around the planet, transporting heat and salt. She is also passionate about creating an inclusive, equitable, and diverse environment in academia with a social justice lense.
NIcole Couto
Dr. Nicole Couto is an Assistant Project Scientist in the Multiscale Ocean Dynamics group at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her love of the ocean and being at sea probably dates back to a children’s picture book called “Nicole’s Boat” that she read hundreds of times as a child. She has spent time on research vessels and sailing ships all over the world, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Equatorial Pacific, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Her research focuses on how the ocean mixes and moves heat into the polar regions where it can melt glaciers and sea ice. She loves spending time outdoors whether on a boat, a surfboard, a bike, or her own two feet.
Matthew Alford
Dr. Matthew Alford is a Professor of Oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where he is the head of the Oceans and Atmospheres section and a co-founder of the Multi-scale Ocean Dynamics Group. Having spent over three years of his life at sea on research ships all over the world, he specializes in novel measurements of ocean processes, especially turbulence since it is so important to the oceans’ circulation and the Earth’s climate. He loves to surf, play guitar and read on the beach, as well as to try to solve the world’s problems with his passionate wife Amanda and 17-year-old daughter Zoë.
Devon Northcott
Devon is a fourth year PhD student at Scripps Institution of oceanography. He has been in and around the ocean for his whole life, growing up boogie boarding and surfing in Hawaii and Santa Cruz, California. He studied physics and earth sciences in college at UCSD while lifeguarding over the summer. Devon now studies ocean currents and how they are measured as a student in the Multiscale Ocean Dynamics group at Scripps. When he’s not at work (and sometimes when he is), Devon likes to surf, swim, bike and hike.
Kerstin Bergentz
Kerstin is a third year Ph.D student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Born and raised in Sweden, Kerstin grew up in/on/around the ocean but took a bit of a winding path to Scripps, volunteering as a coral reef research diver in Fiji, working various jobs (from medical assistant to vegetable seller) and studying both engineering and geography before she eventually discovered the field of Oceanography and got hooked. She’s curious about many things in the ocean like waves and energy and the ocean’s role in our climate. In her free time she enjoys being outside or playing the guitar and is trying to teach herself Spanish.
