Professor Ralph Rayner FIMarEST

Co-chair IMarEST Operational Oceanography SIG

Ralph is a Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Statistics at LSE as well as holding a position with The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  He is a fellow of the Institute for Marine Engineering, Science and Technology, the Society for Underwater Technology, the Marine technology Society, the Royal Meteorological Society and the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

Ralph’s academic background is in ocean science and technology.  Throughout his career he has worked at the interface between the public and private sectors in meeting the need for monitoring of the ocean environment in support of understanding climate change, the use of ocean resources and the protection of the marine environment.  He is a former chair of the IOC/UNESCO Global Ocean Observing System Steering Committee and currently serves on the advisory bodies of a number on leading ocean science research organisations, including Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the Schmidt Ocean Institute.  He is Editor in Chief of the Journal of Operational Oceanography and is a founding trustee of the Rising Seas Institute.

Dr Peter Lean

Senior Scientist, ECMWF

Peter is a Senior Scientist at ECMWF working in the Earth System Assimilation Section. He previously worked on mesoscale model development at the UK Met Office before completing postdoctoral positions at NASA JPL and at the University of Reading as a EUMETSAT Fellow.

Dr Rachel Furner

Machine Learning & Ocean Modelling Scientist, ECMWF

Rachel Furner is a data-driven ocean modeller at ECMWF, where she is developing a machine learning-based global ocean model. This model will be used as part of a fully machine-learning based earth system model funded by the Destination Earth initiative.

Rachel has a strong foundation in mathematics and over a decade of experience in ocean modelling, having previously worked at the UK Met Office, contributing to the development and operational use of the NEMO physics-based model for storm surge and coastal ocean forecasting. She recently completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey using machine learning to emulate idealised channel ocean configurations.

Dr Jozef Skakala

Senior Scientist in Marine System Modelling, Plymouth Marine Laboratory

Jozef’s background (including PhD) is in theoretical and mathematical physics. After spending three years as postdoctoral researcher in theoretical physics, Jozef has spent the last decade at Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), for nine past years closely collaborating with the Met Office on developments in marine biogeochemistry data assimilation. This work has directly fed into the Met Office operational and reanalysis system for the UK regional seas biogeochemistry. In addition to data assimilation, in the last years Jozef has led PML work activities in the area of machine learning applications in modelling and data assimilation, as well as in the field of bio-optical modelling. On a national level, Jozef is a co-chair of National Partnership for Ocean Prediction’s Marine Data Assimilation group and lead for PML science in the National Centre for Earth Observation.