Meet The Team

Who are we?

The Oceanographic and Climate Services (OCS) team members bring with them a variety of backgrounds and interests. What brings us together is a common care for our ocean and climate. Here we feature some team profiles to share with you an idea of the scope of our work.

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Denise O'Sullivan

Denise is a Team Lead in Climate Science and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). Denise works with Essential Ocean Variable data to develop ocean climate indicators. Ocean climate indicators help us to monitor and understand how climate change is impacting the good environmental status of our ocean. These indicators will be used to integrate climate change into MSFD Reporting and will help us identify marine species and habitats most at risk to climate change. Denise has a background in Data Science and Analysis and is interested in ecosystem-based management and the integration of physical, chemical and biological science to gain a comprehensive understanding of how our oceans are changing.

Deirdre Fitzhenry

Deirdre is a project manager in the Oceanographic & Climate Services team.  She oversees the successful delivery of a number of EMFAF (European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund) projects and is responsible for the Marine Institute’s main task in EuroGO-SHIP, a Horizon Europe project supporting the ship-based hydrographic community and working with the European Research Infrastructure landscape community. She has worked across various funding programs including Interreg, Horizon 2020, and Horizon Europe; and has contributed to the advancement of a number of national marine observing infrastructure programmes.  She ensures successful delivery of ocean observing projects and actively contributes to the Marine Institute’s climate programme, providing support for ongoing initiatives, helping to advance our understanding of climate change and inform climate adaptation. 

Eoghan Daly

Eoghan Daly is a physical oceanographer and HEO data coordinator for Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) in Irish waters. He is currently working on EMFAF ‘Sentinel Sites’ observation platforms and data in aquaculture related coastal waters. Areas of expertise comprises ocean observations, ocean data management and instrumentation. Areas of interest include ocean processes along the continental margin, such as boundary currents, ocean shelf exchange and water mass interaction.

Catherine Jordan

Catherine is a Postdoctoral Researcher specialising in Remote Sensing within the Oceanographic & Climate Services team. Catherine is working on an exciting project funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFAF) which aims to integrate satellite remote sensing technology into the study of ecosystem changes and marine management. The goal is to boost Ireland's ability to use satellite images to gather important data that supports national and European marine policies, such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) Directive. The project will provide supporting data for the latest marine climate and ecosystem models, develop useful ocean colour and temperature maps for our customers in government and help meet climate action goals, including those outlined in Ireland's Climate Action Plan and the National Marine Planning Framework.

Tomasz Dabrowski

Tomasz is an Ocean Modelling Team Leader in the Oceanographic and Climate Services group at the Marine Institute. He has over 23 years of experience in the field of numerical hydrodynamic and biogeochemical modelling and in the development of tailored downstream services. He is responsible for the delivery of operational forecasting, climate modelling and researching and developing models for specific applications in the areas of aquaculture, fisheries, safety at sea, search and rescue, tourism, marine pollution and conservation, renewable energy and others. He is involved in number of international initiatives in the area of ocean modelling and observation to include Iberia-Biscay-Ireland Regional Ocean Observing System (IBIROOS), EuroGOOS Coastal Working Group, OceanPredict Coastal Ocean and Shelf Science Task Team (COSS-TT), World Meteorological Organization Expert Team on Met-Ocean Requirements (WMO ET-MOR), Copernicus National Marine Stakeholder Forum and he is a Chair of the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) Working Group on Operational Oceanographic Products for Fisheries and Environment.

Joe McGovern

Joe is the Ocean Climate Modelling team leader in the Oceanographic and Climate Services group at the Marine Institute, Ireland. Joe’s work, funded by the Marine Knowledge strand of the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund (EMFAF), involves overseeing the set up and operation of ocean circulation models in a climate context, and the development of climate services from the ocean climate model outputs (e.g. temperature and salinity anomalies, habitat suitability maps, marine heat waves). As part of the EMFF BIOCELTIC and JPI Oceans/JPI Climate CE2COAST projects, Joe developed an ocean circulation and biogeochemistry model of the Celtic Sea. Joe’s previous work includes building multitrophic aquaculture into an ocean biogeochemistry model as part of the Horizon2020 TAPAS project, overseeing tools development in the Interreg MyCOAST project and validating the CMEMS IBI (Iberia-Biscay-Irish) reanalysis and near real-time biogeochemical models. 

Hazem Nagy

Hazem is a post-doctoral researcher at the Marine Institute, Ocean Modelling Team in the Oceanographic and Climate Services Group, Ireland. His research interests include physical oceanography, numerical ocean, climate and biogeochemical modelling, climate dynamics, marine heat waves, meridional circulation, phytoplankton, upwelling systems, Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). Hazem is currently working on climate projection simulations for Irish waters as part of the EMFAF project (European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund). Within the Marine Institute, he has conducted research, marine and climate services in some EU projects such as iFADO (Innovation of Atlantic Deep Ocean) and supported EU project requirements in CoClime (Co-development of Climate Services for adaptation to changing Marine Ecosystems). He has also carried out validation of models using various observational data (e.g., CTDs, Argos, Satellites SST, Gliders).

 

Diego Pereiro

Diego is a Physical Oceanographer in the Oceanographic and Climate Services group at the Marine Institute, Ireland. He is responsible for maintaining and developing the operational ocean numerical modelling system at the Marine Institute. He has worked closely with the aquaculture sector in Ireland in the ForCoast and EuroSea projects delivering ocean modelling and observation services. Diego has also worked with particle-tracking models to aid in Search and Rescue operations at sea.

Sara Cloux

Sara is part of the Ocean Modelling team of the Ocean and Climate Services group at the Irish Marine Institute. She mainly works on Lagrangian modelling, applied mainly to monitoring of marine litter related to ocean conservation (e.g. CleanAtlantic, LAMARCA and FreeLitter projects), trying to define areas of high accumulation or with a higher tendency to retain litter.

Eva Cullen

Eva is an EMFAF-funded PhD student working to enhance the detection and monitoring of phytoplankton in Irish waters using hyperspectral data. Her research aims to develop and improve algorithms for identifying different types of phytoplankton from space, using satellite ocean colour data and machine learning techniques. A key part of her work involves integrating hyperspectral data collected from ship-based sensors to refine these algorithms, improve the accuracy of satellite measurements, and validate satellite data. Eva's research will create operational tools that allow for real-time monitoring of phytoplankton dynamics and water quality in Irish waters.

 

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