The Zanowski Lab

About me:

If there's one thing you should know about me it's that I rock oceanography from pole to pole, from past to future, and from planet to planet. If you're curious to find out more, then please keep reading!

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Program Director and PI (along with co-PI Ankur Desai) of the STORM REU. I grew up in a furnace (Arizona), and I now live in a freezer, but I promise I tried out several states in between. My first love is astronomy, but I am exceptionally bad at finding time to get out of town so I can get lost in the night sky. I also love dogs, and I enjoy being outdoors, especially in the sun. I wear my heart on my sleeve, I have no poker face, and I am not sorry for either of those things. I also curse. A lot.

My philosophy:

My number one goal as a scientist... is to ensure that the academic research enterprise becomes a place that is truly accessible and welcoming to everyone who wants to do science. The geoscience community as it stands is currently not that place, but I am one voice among many working to change that. And change it we will.

My number one goal as a professor... is to lift my students with me and beyond me as they make their journey through school and into their careers. I have by and large found discourse around students (especially graduate students) to be extractive rather than focused on their humanity, despite the latter being critical to all forms of success. It is my job to give my students the tools and the environment that they need to succeed, and to help them define success in whatever way is meaningful to them, no matter how different it is from my own goals. 

My number one goal as a human being... is to live by this rule: middle fingers up.

My research + background:

My research covers a wide variety of topics, mostly in the realms of polar oceanography and paleoceanography (but really I do whatever interests me), and I typically use climate models to do my work. My early research was in Antarctic ocean modeling,  which was the topic of my Ph.D. research at Princeton University as well as part of the work I did as a postdoctoral fellow at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO; now CICOES) at the University of Washington.  In 2021 I moved to UW-Madison from the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado Boulder where I used climate models to explore several new areas including present and future Arctic freshwater transport and storage, the deglacial Pacific Ocean circulation, and the formation of Pikialasorsuaq (the North Water polynya) during the mid-Holocene. While the poles are where my heart resides, I have also dabbled in equatorial oceanography, particularly in understanding deep Pacific and Indian Ocean velocity variability from Argo float data. 

In addition to my current Arctic research, I study the physical oceanography of early Earth as well as ocean circulation on exoplanets, both of which have led to my participation in and position as an Advisory Council member and Theme Lead for the Wisconsin Center for Origins Research (WiCOR).