Staff Profile

Elena Ceballos-Romero

Preferred Name: Elena Ceballos

Postdoctoral Scholar

POSTDOC FELLOW

MARINE CHEMISTRY & GEOCHEMISTRY

Email: eceballos@whoi.edu

Phone: 508 289 4851

Website: https://es.linkedin.com/in/elena-ceballos-romero-6895945b

Lab/Group Site: https://www2.whoi.edu/staff/mceballosromero/

Some Info Committed and enthusiastic. Music lover. Spanish.

Education

BSc in Physics (5-years degree, 2006-2011) at the University of Sevilla (Spain), with a marked experimental formation. MSc in Nuclear Physics (2011-2012) at the University of Münster (Germany) focused on nuclear detectors and the optimization of a gas flow proportional counter for alpha and beta measurements. PhD in Applied Nuclear Physics (2013-2019) at the University of Sevilla (Spain) specialized on the measurement of total and particulate concentrations of the radioactive pairs 238U-234Th and 210Pb-210Po in the seawater to estimate carbon export from surface ocean to the sea floor. Methodologies included both experimental and simulation techniques. During the PhD I carried out research stays for a total of two years in several international world-renowed ocenographic institutions. This includes stays at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in Southampton (UK) from September 2013 to March 2015, the Alfred Wagner Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven (Germany) from September to December 2017, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts (USA) from October to December 2018. Additionally, I have participated in a 6-weeks oceanographic cruise to the Southern Ocean sponsored by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS, UK) in December 2013 and a 3-weeks oceanographic cruise to the North Atlantic as part of NASA funded EXPORTS project and WHOI’s OTZ project in May 2021.

Research Statement

The ultimate purpose of my research is to contribute to better quantify the role of the oceans in the global carbon cycle. I focus on the use of particle imaging with high resolution underwater cameras, UVP (Underwater Vision Profiler) type, to improve the accuracy of quantifying carbon export in the oceans via the Biological Carbon Pump (BCP) and the parameterization of the key processes controlling it. I aim at i) coupling the understanding of the biological processes obtained from the camera images to algorithms to precisely estimate carbon fluxes, and ii) developing improved global parametrizations of the BCP efficiency and carbon flux attenuation, key areas of expertise for describing the present and future role of the BCP in global climate models.

Actively involved in projects to engage girls in STEM by visualizing past references and creating new ones for them.