David Naar has 41 years of experience in seafloor mapping. His work began at UC Santa Barbara in 1979 with side-scan mapping projects, followed by multibeam mapping in 1982. Since then, Naar has used many different acoustic single beam and multibeam sonars at frequencies ranging from 3.5 to 400 kHz. Naar joined the USF-CMS in 1990 where he began using multibeam sonar for many ONR, NOAA, NSF, USGS seafloor mapping investigations, benthic habitat studies, as well as bathymetry verifications for several hyperspectral, optical, and AUV side-scan programs. These activities served as education and training of Marine Science MS and PhD graduate students. David is now the Associate Dean overseeing Academic Programs for USF CMS.

Dr. Chen’s research focuses on the estuarine and coastal processes. He is using the high-resolution Tampa Bay Coastal Ocean Model (TBCOM), which provides daily automated nowcasts and forecasts, to look how varied environmental factors affect the models under different situations. Applications of Chen’s work include how Tampa Bay responds to hurricane storm surge, how modifications to wastewater treatment effluent may affect Hillsborough Bay, and how biogenic materials such as red tide cells may aggregate along fronts within the Bay. While tracking the 2018 K. brevis red tide, his TBCOM products were used by the Hillsborough County Office of Emergency Management in their weekly red tide briefings and by Pinellas County to help guide their dead fish clean-up operations.

Dr. John is a postdoc with the Ocean Circulation Lab (OCL). He holds a doctorate in Physics (Interdisciplinary in Marine Science) and worked on the FVCOM model of the lake and estuarine system in south India. He has over eight years of experience in the field of coastal and estuarine processes. He is well-versed in numerical modeling (FVCOM and WRF), model visualization (4D), and machine learning (TensorFlow). Prior to joining the OCL, he was a project scientist at the India Meteorological Department, New Delhi. His primary focus at USF is on operational support for the West Florida coastal ocean model in ocean circulation lab, utilizing the FVCOM model. In addition to the WFCOM, he is actively involved in developing a biological model tailored to the unique ecosystem of the West Florida Shelf. He is also working on the NOAA-funded project with the Unified Forecast System (UFS) -NOAA Coastal Application Team for the high resolution FVCOM model for the New York Harbor.

Mr. Donovan graduated from the University of Florida in 1985 with a degree in Computer Engineering. He has worked with the Ocean Circulation Lab (led by Dr. Weisberg) for 34 years serving as the system administrator, data manager, database administrator and programmer. He is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the Ocean Circulation Lab. Mr. Donovan will manage all data collected by the lab, both real-time and delayed mode, from acquisition and quality control through archival and dissemination, which will be incorporated into COMIT’s models.

Mr. Law is a physical oceanographer engaged in ocean circulation studies as part of the Ocean Circulation Lab under the direction of Dr. Weisberg. Additionally, Mr. Law has 2 decades of experience in design and deployment of real-time observing systems in the coastal ocean. His primary duties for the COMIT project are in coordinating physical oceanographic field work.

Mr. Silverman has worked on several projects at USF over the last decade including operating and integrating Teledyne-Webb Slocum underwater gliders, designing remote sensor data collection units, serving as lead software engineer for the C-BASS towed camera, and operating and evaluating a neural network based computer vision systems to assess fisheries stock on the West Florida Shelf. On COMIT, Mr. Silverman assists in the Center’s database and data storage management, AI development, and provides technical expertise for the UxSs and geodetic operations.

Mr. Clark received a degree in Marine and Atmospheric Science from the University of Miami in 2016, and has experience in fisheries research programs with a focus on habitat mapping and video-based stock assessment methods in the Gulf of Mexico. At USF, Mr. Clark provides support for multiple projects including C-BASS towed camera surveys and underwater glider operations. Within COMIT, he will help develop the Crowdsourced Bathymetry project and other outreach programs.

Graham has 13 years of experience as a marine geophysicist with specialties in seafloor mapping and sub-surface geophysical survey, particularly in polar environments. He has participated in 9 major Antarctic ship-based field expeditions and had hands-on experience in mapping, processing, and interpreting datasets from manned (ROVs) and unmanned (AUVs) vehicles, in deep water and under-ice environments. He is currently a co-PI on the 5-year, $50 million NSF-funded International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC), working most recently alongside Swedish collaborators on geological interpretations of geophysical data collected with a state-of-the-art Kongsberg HUGIN AUV.

Dr. Yunfang Sun is a physical oceanographer with over 10 years of experience in studies of computational fluid dynamics and ocean modeling, dynamics of coupled oceanic-atmospheric modeling, estuary and coastal ocean processes, and coupled physical-biological modeling. Dr. Sun is currently responsible for the new high-resolution WFCOM modeling.

 Dr. Sun’s CV