Diane Bennett Fribance
Diane Bennett Fribance, Assistant Professor,Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC, USA
I am a coastal observational Physical Oceanographer currently teaching at Coastal Carolina University, a liberal arts institution in South Carolina. As an undergraduate at Williams College my major was in Computer Science, and I discovered oceanography after graduation. My Ph.D. is from the University of Connecticut where my studies focused on the tidal and residual circulation of Long Island Sound, connecting to the hypoxic events that occur there seasonally. I came to CCU after a two year postdoc working for the NRL at Stennis Space Center. One branch of my current research is concentrated on Winyah Bay, where I intend to continue to make microstructure turbulence measurements to connect mixing and dissipation rates to tides and river inputs. I am also collaborating with a group looking at the physical forcings leading to hypoxia in Long Bay, SC, where we are combining long-term pier measurements with observations of velocities and taking a statistical approach to data analysis in connecting the causes and effects of the ecological impacts. I also focus a lot of my time on getting undergraduates started in research both through traditional and nontraditional coursework. I love working at a university where I can spend time focused on developing research skills in undergraduate students and introducing them to various instrumentation and fundamentals of field work.