Partner Presentation
The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world and a world-leading centre of teaching and research, having been ranked first in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2017 and 2018.
According to the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, the official UKwide assessment of all university research, Oxford has the largest volume of world-leading research in the country. Oxford's research activity involves more than 70 departments, the colleges, more than 1,800 academic staff, more than 5,500 research and research support staff, and more than 6,100 graduate research students. Oxford consistently has the highest research income from external sponsors of any UK university. Oxford has pioneered the commercial exploitation of academic research and invention through Oxford University Innovation. The wholly owned technology transfer company has spun off 150 businesses and files more patents than any other UK university.
The work on SO-CHIC at Oxford will be carried out in the Department of Physics, the leading physics department in the UK according to the 2014 Research Excellence Framework. Over the past decade, the university has made substantial new investments in order to establish itself as a leading centre of excellence in Physical Climate Science, focused in the Department of Physics where there are now 17 faculty working on the physics of the atmospheres, oceans and cryosphere of the Earth (and other planets), with work spanning development and deployment of planetary instrumentation, retrieval of properties from data, numerical modelling and theory. The department currently holds 3 ERC grants in climate research has been engaged in several European Union projects of the successive framework programs.
Role in project
The University of Oxford (D. Marshall) co-leads the science work package on upper ocean ventilation pathways (WP2). In addition to coordination of the work package, the University of Oxford contribution is to lead the modelling submesoscale-resolving modelling to test and refine the sampling strategy for the field experiment, drawing on recent experience obtained in the UK OSMOSIS project, and to participate in investigating the impact of resolved and parameterized submesoscale and parameterized vertical mixing process on the annual mixed layer cycle.
Key Personnel
David Marshall
Professor of Physical Oceanography in the Department of Physics and Professorial Fellow of St Hugh’s College at the University of Oxford