Bio: Luca Centurioni

Office: +1 (858) 534-6182
lcenturioni@ucsd.edu

Dr. Luca R. Centurioni is the director of the Lagrangian Drifter Laboratory  and Principal Investigator of the NOAA funded Global Drifter Program (GDP), a global array of surface drifters delivering real-time oceanographic and meteorological observations.

Dr. Centurioni is also a research oceanographer, lecturer and CIMEAS fellow at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography where he conducts scientific research and advises graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.

Dr. Centurioni was a Research Fellow at HR Wallingford Ltd (1992-1995), received his PhD (2000) in physical oceanography from the Southampton Oceanography Centre (SOC, U.K.) and was a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the James Rennel Division (SOC, 1999-2002) before moving to Scripps in 2002.

At Scripps, Dr. Centurioni worked with Prof. Niiler, the founder of the GDP, on Lagrangian drifter studies and developments and as a scientific and technical advisor for Dr. Niiler’s GDP, before succeeding to him as PI in 2010.

He is a member of the executive board of the Data Buoy Cooperation Panel (DBCP) of the World Meteorological Organization and of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, and chair/co-chair of several DBCP projects.

Dr. Centurioni ‘s Lagrangian Drifter Laboratory provides about 1,000 drifter/year and designs new sensors and instruments for the collection of oceanographic and meteorological data in the world’s ocean, including in the path of tropical storms. He has authored or coauthored more than 80 peer-reviewed articles in major scientific journals.