Bernard Akaawase

I am a postdoctoral investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. I hold a bachelor’s degree in Marine Engineering and a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Connecticut, where I worked under the supervision of Prof. Leonel Romero in the Air–Sea Interaction Laboratory.

At WHOI, I am working with Drs. Momme Hell and Anthony Kirincich on two projects. The first is validating Community Earth System Model (CESM) simulations of the coupled ocean, wave, and sea ice components, driven by prescribed atmospheric forcing, in the Northwest Atlantic. The second is analyzing wave observations for a wind farm project.

My research focuses on wave breaking and ocean-surface wave dynamics, with emphasis on wave-breaking directionality, 3D stereo reconstruction using visible and infrared imaging, and phase-resolved analysis of the sea surface. I develop observational and computational tools to quantify energy dissipation and improve physics-based models used in predicting air–sea fluxes, marine weather, and environmental conditions.

My broader interests include ocean observing systems, oceanography, remote sensing techniques, machine learning for environmental inference, and advancing directional parameterizations in spectral wave models.