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June 19, 2025

Matthew Alford, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has wrapped up his four-month term as a Fulbright Canada Research Chair at UVic.

From February to May, Jody Klymak of UVic’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences hosted Alford, a seagoing physical oceanographer who develops and employs novel instrumentation to better describe and understand turbulence and other ocean processes.

“My time in British Columbia was very productive and I was very impressed by the collegiality and commitment to education at the ßÉßɱ¬ÁÏ School of Earth and Ocean Sciences,” Alford says. “I worked very closely with professors Jody Klymak and Chris Garrett on gaining insight from numerical simulations of tidal flows near the ocean seafloor.  Jody ran many 2D numerical simulations that were inspired by our recent observations in the Boundary Layer Turbulence experiment.  We are continuing this work and plan to write it up in the coming year.”

Alford also gave seminars at the Institute for Ocean Science in Sidney and UVic’s Ocean Networks Canada and School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, offered presentations for students and post-doctoral fellows at both UVic and UBC and attended the Ocean Visions conference in Vancouver, BC in March 2025.

“Given this unprecedented time in global history but more particularly in the relationship between the US and Canada, it was a very poignant time to be in Canada,” Alford says. “With professors Klymak, Garrett and Hamme from UVic and Waterman and Balmforth of UBC, I had numerous discussions on the state of science under the current US administration and possible next steps.  Personally, it was a very rich and rewarding time to be in Canada and to observe what kindness looks on a national level.”

Rachel Goldsworthy