My overall interest lies in large-scale, long-term morphodynamics in the coastal and shelf environment. This was developed while I was working at the Field Research Facility (FRF) of the U.S. Army Corps Waterways Experiment Station in North Carolina,USA, from 1992 to 1994. At the FRF I applied statistical analysis to biweekly beach-nearshore bottom profiles measured for more than 10 years to examine the storm-driven, medium-term (~decade) behavior of barred profiles. It was found that two processes of (1) morphologic change during groups of storm events and (2) the steady onshore feed of sediments from the shoreface duirng intervening periods appear to play an important role on medium-term evolution at Duck. Nonetheless, physical mechanisms responsible for these processes were arising questions from the study. Realizing that application of physics-based, deterministic nearshore and shelf processes is the right direction for resolving these questions, I have been working on benthic boundary layer processes, sediment transport processes and inner-shelf morphodynamics modeling at Virginia Institute of Marine Science since 1994.
After completing my Ph.D., I came to the Institute of Theoretical Geophysics at the University of Cambridge, working on nearshore sediment transport. Among various aspects of sediment transport process, my primary research of current and immediate future lies in the interaction among bedforms, near-bed flow and sediment suspension near the bed.