Raffaele Ferrari

Raffaele Ferrari is the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Oceanography in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, a leading Geoscience faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the MIT EAPS faculty in 2002 as an assistant professor, progressed to associate professor in 2006, and became a full professor in 2009. Prior to MIT, Ferrari served as a postdoctoral scholar at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution from 2000 to 2002. His academic background includes a BS and MS in physics from the Università di Torino in 1994, a PhD in fluid dynamics from the Politecnico di Torino in 1999, and a PhD in oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2000. Ferrari chaired the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate from 2012 to 2022, currently directs the program, and co-directs the MIT Lorenz Center. He previously held the Breene M. Kerr Chair from 2011 to 2016.

A prominent physical oceanographer, Raffaele Ferrari examines the ocean's role in the Earth system, with a focus on turbulence in the ocean and atmosphere, its effects on marine biology and the carbon cycle, and ocean-atmosphere-land interactions shaping past, present, and future climates. His research encompasses atmospheric dynamics, biogeochemistry, fluid dynamics, ocean dynamics and modeling, and paleoclimate. Key investigations by his group include the role of winds and tropical cyclones in ocean heat transport, eddy mixing and its representation in climate models, energy cycles in global ocean circulation, physical processes enabling phytoplankton spring blooms, and ocean circulation during the Last Glacial Maximum. Ferrari serves as co-principal investigator for the Climate Modelling Alliance (CliMA), developing GPU-optimized Earth system models with AI tools, and Bringing Computation to the Climate Challenge (BC3), building AI emulators of Earth system models. Notable publications include "Oceananigans.jl: Fast and friendly geophysical fluid dynamics on GPUs" (Journal of Open Source Software, 2020), "The vortex gas scaling regime of baroclinic turbulence" (PNAS, 2020), and "Turning Ocean Mixing Upside Down" (Journal of Physical Oceanography, 2016). His mentorship has produced graduates and postdocs at institutions such as GFDL, CSIRO, and the University of Cambridge. Awards include the 2022 Harald Sverdrup Lecture (AGU), 2019 Ally of Nature (MIT), 2016 Robert L. and Bettie P. Cody Award (Scripps), 2012 Moore Distinguished Scholar (Caltech), and 2007 Nicholas P. Fofonoff Award (AMS).

Professional Email: raffaele@mit.edu