Research Stories

by Jessica McCann

Inverse Ocean Modeling (IOM) is a modular data assimilation system. Researchers use it as a tool to combine computer models of the ocean with observations of the ocean. The system itself has been in development for nearly a quarter-century. In 2001, the National Science Foundation funded a seven-university consortium to further develop the system. The group also is creating educational tools to make the system more accessible and easier to use.

Julia Muccino is part of the consortium. The ASU associate professor of civil and environmental engineering is a leader in its educational efforts. She spearheaded creation of the IOM website. The site serves as a repository for the model software, a place for research exchange, and is an education tool for the techniques used in IOM.

Another component is a summer school course led by Andrew Bennett of Oregon State University. Bennett is IOM's senior principal investigator The two-week Summer School on Inverse Methods and Data Assimilation is based on a semester-long upper-level graduate course for physical oceanography students. Bennett thought it would be interesting to involve engineering undergraduate students in the course. In 1999, he invited Muccino to assemble of group of students to attend.

It was an overwhelming idea, Muccino admits. Most of the roughly 80 participants already had doctorate degrees and significant research experience.

"I wasn't convinced that engineering undergraduates would find such an advanced oceanography class useful or interesting," she says. "But I eventually decided that, with some intense preparation beforehand, they would be able to grasp some of the major concepts."

She and four of her students took the challenge. They met weekly in the months preceding the trip—a sort of crash course before the course. They discussed a variety of topics that would be addressed. During the course itself, Muccino and her students continued to hold daily "tutorial" sessions to keep pace. Those sessions actually became poplar among the other participants, as well.

"By the second week, much of the mathematics was well above an undergraduate level. My students turned their attention from the lectures to the computer room. They wrote some impressive code for the homework assignments from earlier in the course," she says.

Back at ASU, two of the four students took the next step. They applied the advanced data assimilation techniques they had learned at the summer school to their own research projects involving flow through sand columns and porous rock walls.

To learn more about Julia Muccino's work in fluid dynamics, see, "Waves of information."