Professor Susan Allen is a physical oceanographer. Trained as a physicist, applied mathematician and fluid dynamicist, her early, and one of her continuing focuses, is the dynamics of rotating flow over topography with a particular emphasis on submarine canyons. Using theory, laboratory experiments, and numerical simulations, and collaborating with observationalists, she has generated an overall picture of the pattern and strength of upwelling over submarine canyons. By invitation from an International Science Council’s Scientific Committee for Oceanographic Research (SCOR) working group, she co-wrote a review paper on the role of submarine canyons in ocean/shelf exchange.
Her other major area of research is the biological, physical, and chemical processes in the upper water column of the Strait of Georgia for which her group produces predictions for timing of the spring phytoplankton bloom each year. She was the recipient of the 2013 Francois Saucier Prize in Applied Oceanography.
Susan Allen was a member of the steering committee of Canada GLOBEC, has sat on a number of CMOS committees including current membership on the Science Committee, and is a member of the Neptune Scientific Advisory Committee. She has held a faculty appointment at UBC since 1990, where she teaches physical oceanography, ocean and atmosphere dynamics, and numerical techniques.
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