Our Team

Jing Chen

Dr. Chen’s research focuses on the estuarine and coastal processes. He uses the high-resolution Tampa Bay Coastal Ocean Model (TBCOM), which provides daily automated nowcasts and forecasts, to look at how varied environmental factors may affect Tampa Bay and the adjacent Gulf of Mexico under different situations. Applications of Chen’s work include how Tampa Bay responds to hurricane storm surges, how modifications to wastewater treatment effluent may affect Hillsborough Bay, and how biogenic materials such as red tide cells may aggregate along fronts. While tracking the 2018 K. brevis red tide, his TBCOM products were used by the Hillsborough County Office of Emergency Management in their weekly red tide briefings and by Pinellas County to help guide their dead fish clean-up operations.