Recent additions to the SMAST faculty are successfully competing nationally for research funds and building strong research programs and funding records. Associate Professor Dan MacDonald, who joined the Department of Estuarine and Ocean Sciences in 2003, has been awarded a half million dollars by the National Science Foundation to conduct the second stage of his Merrimack River Mixing and Divergence Experiment, or MERMADE 2. An analysis of the physics of river plumes, the research builds upon his previous 3-year NSF grant, and includes an additional $500 thousand for his project collaborators at the University of Washington and Texas A&M University. SMAST Professor Lou Goodman is co-investigator for the project.

Assistant Professor Geoffrey Cowles, Department of Fisheries Oceanography, who joined the SMAST faculty just last fall, has received two major research grants since his appointment. Cowles is principal investigator on a $120 thousand project funded by the Office of Naval Research to model Skagit Bay in Washington State to investigate the effects of sediment transport on the morphology of estuarine systems. With MIT Sea Grant support, Cowles is also leading a $150 thousand, two-year study to assess tidal energy potential off the Massachusetts coast, as well as the potential hydrodynamic effects of harvesting that energy. Both projects involve the use of the FVCOM ocean model, originated by Prof. Changsheng Chen’s laboratory at SMAST, where Cowles served as research scientist before joining the SMAST faculty.