Dr. Patrick Heimbach is a physical oceanographer and senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He seeks to understand the ocean's general circulation, and its role in the climate system, using a state-of-the-art general circulation model. He combines the modeling with observations, from space and on the ground, to produce a three-dimensional, time-evolving simulation of the global ocean and its sea ice cover. His interests also include ice sheet, glacier and sea ice dynamics, as well as the interaction of polar ice sheets with the ocean and their contribution to sea level rise.