About

Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Oceanography
Director of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate

Raffaele FerrariI am a physical oceanographer interested in the circulation of the ocean, its interaction with the atmosphere and climate. I use a combination of observations, theory and numerical models to investigate all oceanic motions from scales of centimeters to thousands of kilometers.

I got interested in oceanography while a physics major at the University of Torino in Italy. I so much enjoyed applying physics principles to explain the world around us that I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in physical oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (La Jolla, CA). After a short postdoc at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Woods Hole, MA), I arrived at MIT (Cambridge, MA) in 2002. Here I have fun investigating the physics of the ocean, atmosphere and climate with the exceptional students and postdocs that come to MIT. It is very rewarding to apply physics principles to understand one of the defining scientific questions of our time: the inner workings of Earth’s climate.

I am a faculty of the MIT Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science Department, Director of the MIT Program of Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate, and a member of the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Physical Oceanography and the MIT Climate Modeling Initiative.

Awards and Honors

  • Ally of Nature Award, MIT 2019
  • Robert L. and Bettie P. Cody Award, Scripps Instit. of Oceanogr. 2016
  • Cecil and Ida Green Chair, MIT 2016-present
  • Moore Scholar, Caltech 2013
  • Breene M. Kerr Chair, MIT 2011-2016
  • Cecil and Ida Green Chair, MIT, 2007-2011
  • Nicholas P. Fofonoff Award, American Meteorological Society 2007
  • Killian and Lee Scholar Award, MIT 2004
  • Victor P. Starr Career Development Chair, MIT 2003-2006