Dr. Virmani is the first Executive Director of Schmidt Ocean Institute. Previously, she was the Executive Director of Planet & Environment at XPRIZE, where she worked on several global competitions for innovation, including leading the launch of the Rainforest XPRIZE, a competition for innovations in biodiversity assessment technologies. She also led the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE to spur innovations in remote and autonomous, rapid, high-resolution seafloor mapping. Dr. Virmani joined XPRIZE in 2014 as the Technical Director for the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE, a competition advancing pH sensor development to measure ocean acidification.
Before joining XPRIZE, Dr. Virmani was the Associate Director of the Florida Institute of Oceanography and a Senior Scientist at the UK Met Office. She is co-chair of the UN Ocean Decade Technology & Innovation Working Group, and a Trustee of Plymouth Marine Lab. She serves on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute Board of Directors, the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Ocean Studies Board, the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System Federal Advisory Committee, the Oceanology International Catch the Next Wave Committee, and the Ocean Vision AI Advisory Council. She is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and The Explorers Club and a Member of the American Meteorological Society and American Geophysical Union. In 2020, the Marine Technology Reporter Top 100 List named her amongst their top 5 Global Ocean Influencers.
Dr. Virmani has a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, focusing on air-sea Interactions. As a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar, she earned an M.S. in Atmospheric Science from SUNY Stony Brook. She also has a B.Sc. in Physics from Imperial College London and is an Associate of the Royal College of Science.
She wrote a humorous and informative tropical storm blog in her spare time with over 460,000 views. She also produced an award-winning short science fiction film, Hashtag, with her husband, which over 2 million people have seen in 9 countries.
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