Nathan Laxague

Nathan Laxague
Nationality	American
Occupation	Academic, researcher
Known for	Air-sea interaction; ocean surface current dynamics
Alma mater	University of Miami (B.S., Ph.D.)

Nathan Laxague is an American researcher in physical oceanography and mechanical engineering. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of New Hampshire, where his work focuses on air-sea interaction, ocean surface gravity waves, and near-surface current dynamics.

Education

Laxague earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Miami, where he studied from 2007 to 2011. He remained at the University of Miami for doctoral study, receiving a Ph.D. in Applied Marine Physics in 2016.

Career

Following his doctorate, Laxague held a brief appointment as a Postdoctoral Associate in Ocean Sciences at the University of Miami in 2017. He then joined Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University as a Post-Doctoral Scientist in the Ocean and Climate Physics division, a position he held from 2017 to 2020.

In 2020, Laxague joined the University of New Hampshire as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Research

Laxague's published work addresses the physics of the ocean surface, including the dispersion of floating material by ocean currents, the generation of sea spray in high winds, and the use of shipboard and satellite remote sensing to map near-surface ocean currents. According to Semantic Scholar, his body of work totals 53 papers with 1,234 citations and an h-index of 18.

His paper "Ocean convergence and the dispersion of flotsam," published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America in 2018, has been cited 272 times according to Semantic Scholar. He was also a contributor to research on the Grand Lagrangian Deployment (GLAD) experiment in the Gulf of Mexico, examining data assimilation and statistical properties of surface velocity fields measured by ocean drifters.

Laxague has received funding from the National Science Foundation. According to National Science Foundation records, he was awarded a CAREER grant totaling $568,853, beginning February 6, 2024, at the University of New Hampshire, to investigate the impacts of sea breeze and steep surface gravity waves on nearshore air-sea fluxes. He also received a collaborative research award of $52,708, beginning February 26, 2021, to study the relationship between ocean surface gravity-capillary waves, surface-layer hydrodynamics, and air-sea momentum flux. His combined NSF funding as principal or co-principal investigator totals $621,561.

Selected publications

• "Ocean convergence and the dispersion of flotsam," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2018)
• "A Biodegradable Surface Drifter for Ocean Sampling on a Massive Scale" (2017)
• "Observations of Near‐Surface Current Shear Help Describe Oceanic Oil and Plastic Transport" (2018)
• "Data assimilation considerations for improved ocean predictability during the Gulf of Mexico Grand Lagrangian Deployment (GLAD)" (2014)
• "Near-surface current mapping by shipboard marine X-band radar: A validation" (2018)
• "Co-production of knowledge reveals loss of Indigenous hunting opportunities in the face of accelerating Arctic climate change," Environmental Research Letters (2021)
• "Sea Spray Generation in Very High Winds" (2016)
• "Ocean Current Estimation Using a Multi-Model Ensemble Kalman Filter During the Grand Lagrangian Deployment Experiment (GLAD)" (2015)
• "Statistical properties of the surface velocity field in the northern Gulf of Mexico sampled by GLAD drifters" (2016)

External links

• ORCID profile for Nathan Laxague