Dr. Paola Cessi is a Professor of Oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. She earned her Ph.D. in Oceanography from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1987. Her research interests include theories of the large-scale circulation of the ocean, models of climate dynamics, geostrophic turbulence, rotating convection, and geophysical fluid dynamics.
She is the Principal Investigator in a SciDac award that examins the role of mesoscale eddies in the maintenance of the mean oceanic stratification and in the poleward heat transport. She is a recipient of a Leadership Computing Facility allocation at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.