Dr. Abigail Bodner is the X-Window Consortium Career Development Professor at MIT, where she holds a shared position between the Departments of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). Dr. Bodner is a member of the Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems (LIDS) and Center for Computational Science and Engineering (CCSE).
Postdoctoral Associates
Dr. Peng joined our group in July 2024. He previously earned his PhD from CalTech. Dr. Peng works on numerical and theoretical methods for submesoscale and boundary layer turbulence interactions under mesoscale forcing.
Dr. Yidongfang Si
Dr. Si joined our group in July 2025. She previously was a Houghton Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. Raf Ferrari and received her PhD from UCLA. Dr. Si works on inferring submesoscale dynamics from satellite observations.
Dr. McConkey joined our group in October 2024 in collaboration with Prof. Tess Smidt’s lab. He previously received his PhD from the University of Waterloo. Dr. McConkey develops AI methods for turbulence.
Dr. Conn joined our group in December 2025. He previously earned his PhD from CalTech. Dr. Conn works on the dynamics of the upper ocean, with a particular emphasis on ocean turbulence.
Graduate Students
Sarah Snider
Sarah is a second year PhD student in Math & Computational Science and Engineering. She works on the role of submesoscale turbulence in the transition from hydrostatic to non-hydrostatic dynamics.
Raphael Benamran
Raphael is a first year PhD student in EAPS’ Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate. He works on energy and heat transfers in the upper ocean, where submesoscale and wave signals are tangled.
Cody Cruz
Cody is a first year PhD student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program. He works on upper ocean interactions on climatic timescales using a global ocean AI emulator .
Anshul Agarwal
Anshul is a Masters student in EECS and SDM. He is working on generative modeling to reduce gaps in satellite observations of the ocean surface.
Junyang is a visiting PhD student from ETH Zurich. He is working on a Physics Informed Neural Network approach for sea surface height measurements.
Catherine Zhang
Catherine is a second year PhD student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program. As part of her second generals project, she is using machine learning to detect submesoscale patterns from satellite products.
Undergraduate Students
Siiri Roschier
Siiri is a sophomore at MIT majoring in EECS and Math. She joined our group as a UROP in Fall 2025, working on machine learning turbulence closures under the guidance of Dr. Ryley McConkey.
Past Members
Bianca graduated from MIT in Fall 2025. She joined our group in Spring 2025 where she developed a machine learning method to infer upper ocean density profiles from sea surface height.
Aalyaan Ali
Aalyaan was a visiting student from Brown University during Summer 2025. Under the guidance of Dr. Bianca Champanois he explored machine learning and data analysis tools for ocean observations.
bodner research group 