Presenter

Amy MacFadyen, PhD, is a physical oceanographer at the Emergency Response Division of the Office of Response and Restoration (NOAA). The Emergency Response Division (ERD) provides scientific support for oil and chemical spill response -- a key part of which is trajectory forecasting to predict the movement of spills. For example, during the unprecedented Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Dr. MacFadyen and her colleagues at ERD provided daily trajectories to the incident command which were utilized for planning, allocation of resources, and direction of response assets.
Before working with the Emergency Response Division, Dr. MacFadyen was at the University of Washington, first as a graduate student then as a postdoctoral researcher. Her research examined physical oceanography of the Pacific Northwest coastal zone with an application towards prediction of the transport of Harmful Algal Blooms from offshore initiation sites to the Washington coast.