Maureen Brooks

Maureen Brooks joined the Oceanographer of the Navy as the Interagency & International Policy Liaison. She will be working on naval oceanography policy, including issues related to oceanography, marine weather, navigation, and precise time.  

Interactions between ocean physics and seaweed biology are the focus of Brooks’ Ph.D. work in the Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences Graduate Program at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. She used computer models and satellite observations to understand how Sargassum seaweed moves and grows throughout the Atlantic. Her research helps explain why so much of it has been washing up on beaches in recent years and may improve predictions that local residents depend on to prepare for these wash-up events.

As an undergraduate at McDaniel College and a master’s student at the University of Maryland, she combined her loves of science and math into computer models to understand the effects of nutrient pollution in Chesapeake Bay. Brooks was also a Blue Waters Fellow with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where she used high performance computing to conduct environmental research. In her free time, she enjoys kayaking, creative writing, and crafting sea creatures out of yarn.