Meet Mick Follows, PhD
Mick Follows, PhD, Senior Research Scientist, Earth, Atmosphere, & Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Follows GroupThe Darwin Project at MIT
On January 22, 2013, Dr. Follows appeared on SftPublic's Contemporary Science Issues and Innovations to discuss The Role of the Ocean in the Global Climate Cycle. He explained the vital importance of the ocean carbon cycle, which is responsible for absorbing and dissolving most of CO2 in the atmosphere, and he emphasized the role of ocean plankton in maintaining the CO2 balance.
Mick Follows received his PhD in Atomospheric Sciences from the University of East Anglia (UK) in 1991. He then spent a year as a Royal Society Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany before joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a Senior Research Scientist in the MIT Program for Atmospheres, Oceans and Climates.
Dr. Follows" research is focused on the very complex interconnections between the physical, chemical and biological processes that determine the distribution of elements in the ocean and the relationship between ocean ecosystems and their environment. Understanding such a complex system demands expertise in multiple fields: mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. It is necessary to develop models of this biogeochemical system, in part to understand the relationship between the components, and in part to predict the future of Earth's climate. Although challenging this is a very exciting field and it attracts people with diverse backgrounds.
Mick Follows is the co-author of Ocean Dynamics and the Carbon Cycle. Although this is a textbook, the first two chapters are meant as an introduction to this interdisciplinary field and are suitable for the non-specialist.