Team

PI: Tracy Mandel (she/her)

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 hanging out with her cats.

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

Mandel_CV.pdf (updated Sept. 2024)

Ocean Hydrodynamics Lab members

Zeeshan Saeed - PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering

Zeeshan is a fourth-year PhD candidate 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.

Elijah Rousseau - MS Student in Ocean Engineering

Eli is a second-year 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.

Sandip Gautam - MS Student in Mechanical Engineering

Eli is a first-year M.S. student in Mechanical Engineering at UNH, studying vortex-surface interactions, particularly far-field and free-surface effects. He received his Bachelors degree in Aerospace Engineering from Tribhuvan University in Nepal in 2023.

Gabriel Pointer - Undergraduate Researcher

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

Joint Mandel & Oehmke Labs dinner to celebrate the end of the Spring 2024 semester.

Lab alumni

John Webb - Undergraduate Researcher

John graduated with his B.S. in Applied Mathematics at UNH, and worked on instrumentation and flow characterization in the new Coastal Ecohydraulics Flume.

Anne Berg  - Undergraduate Researcher

Anne worked on data analysis studying the seasonal variation in biophysical properties of dune plants. She is currently finishing her B.S. in Ocean Engineering at UNH (and putting her research skills to good use in her senior project to create a tunable-stiffness plant mimic!).

Dr. Theresa Oehmke - Postdoctoral Scholar in Mechanical Engineering

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

Vivek Bheeroo - M.S. in Ocean Engineering

Vivek graduated with his M.S. in Ocean Engineering at UNH, working on laboratory measurements of a dynamic free surface.

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

Phillip Cooper - Undergraduate Researcher

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

Hakeem Z. Villegas Hernandez - Undergraduate Researcher

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 Ehnot - Undergraduate Researcher

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 Page - Undergraduate Researcher/Engineer

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 Thayer - Undergraduate Researcher/Designer

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.

Matthew Dowling - M.Eng. in Ocean Engineering 

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 Villafañe-Pagán - Undergraduate Researcher

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.

Senior Project Teams