Team

The Ocean Hydrodynamics Lab studies turbulent flow at ocean margins. This includes topics from coastal flow through seagrass meadows and salt marshes to the surfacing dynamics of meltwater plumes discharged from marine-terminating glaciers. Our research is primarily experimental and observational, making use of the lab facilities in the Chase Ocean Engineering Lab at UNH and beautiful field sites in the New Hampshire Seacoast.

Tracy Mandel is an experimentalist in the field of environmental fluid mechanics. She received her Ph.D. in 2018 and M.S. in 2013, both from Stanford University, and her B.S. from Cornell University in 2012. Prior to joining UNH as an Assistant Professor in Mechanical and Ocean Engineering, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Merced.

In her free time, she enjoys climbing, knitting, and coming up with fluid-vegetable puns.

You can find her on Google Scholar, ResearchGate, and occasionally Twitter.

Mandel_CV.pdf (updated Jan. 2024)

Zeeshan is a fourth-year PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at UNH, working on the surfacing and mixing dynamics of turbulent buoyant plumes. He received his M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Oklahoma State University in 2019.

Eli is an M.S. student in Ocean Engineering at UNH, studying the transport of sediment through marshes in the Hampton-Seabrook Estuary. He received his Bachelors degree in Physics and Biology from the University of Toronto in 2022.

Anne is currently a senior in Ocean Engineering at UNH, studying the seasonal variation in biophysical properties of American beachgrass.

John is currently a senior in Applied Mathematics at UNH, working on instrumentation and flow characterization in the new Marine Ecohydraulics Flume.

Gabriel is currently a sophomore in Ocean Engineering at UNH, working on infrastructure and instrumentation for seed transport experiments in the Environmental Flows Water Tunnel.

Dr. Oehmke was a postdoc in Mechanical Engineering at UNH, working with Prof. Chris White and with Prof. Mandel. She is a co-PI on a NH Sea Grant project focusing on the transport and dispersal of eelgrass seeds and pollen in turbulent flow through eelgrass meadows. She received her PhD from UC Berkeley and BS from MIT, all in Environmental Engineering.

Dr. Oehmke is currently an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UNH.

Vivek graduate with his M.S. in Ocean Engineering at UNH, working on laboratory measurements of a dynamic free surface. This research was supported by the Office of Naval Research.

Vivek is currently a Ph.D. student at Texas A&M University.

Phil is an undergraduate student in Ocean Engineering at UNH, working on the development of seagrass mimics and flume flow conditioning and characterization.

Hakeem was a visiting undergraduate researcher at UNH during Summer 2023. He studied the trapping of trash and marine debris in wave-driven coastal flows by coastal vegetation.

Hakeem is currently finishing his degree in Industrial Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez.

Jenna graduated with a B.S. in Ocean Engineering from UNH in May 2022. Her research focused on seasonal variation in the biomechanical properties of dune plants, with the goal of understanding how plant stiffness and breakage throughout the year might affect the hydraulic properties of marshes. Check out Jenna's poster from the 2022 Undergraduate Research Conference here! This research was supported by New Hampshire Sea Grant.

Jenna is currently an M.S. student in Ocean Engineering at UNH working in marine robotics.

Matthias graduated with a B.S. in Ocean Engineering at UNH from May 2022. During his time in the lab, he designed, built, and programmed a small-scale wave tank and was the lead designer of the lab's new 10m recirculating flume.

Matthias is currently Ocean Staff Engineer II at Triton Systems, Inc. in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.

Aidan graduated with a B.S. in Ocean Engineering from UNH in May 2022. He worked on the design and construction of the lab's new 10m recirculating flume.

Matt graduated with an MEng in Ocean Engineering in May 2022. For his MEng project, he conducted experiments on the effectiveness of bubble screens in controlling the escape of turbidity/density currents from dredging areas.

Matt is currently a Systems Engineer at CACI Inc. in the Deep Submergence Systems Program.

Jobel was a visiting undergraduate researcher at UNH in Summer 2021, hosted by the Coastal Research Response Center and the School of Marine Science and Ocean Engineering. He studied the settling of oceanic particles such as sediment, plastic, and marine snow in ambient density stratification.

Jobel is currently pursuing his M.S. in Marine and Environmental Geology at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.