Nan Walker

Dr. Nan Walker has more than 30 years of experience in satellite remote sensing of coastal and oceanic processes. She has been employed as a faculty member at LSU in the Coastal Studies Institute and the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences for more than 30 years, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses, advises M.S. and Ph.D. graduate students in their research, and has directed the ESL since 2003. She specializes in using satellite data to advance the understanding of physical processes and air-sea interactions, and has conducted research in the Gulf of Mexico, Florida Keys/Bahama Bank region, the southern African region and the Caribbean Sea. Her research interests include Loop Current eddy circulation, air-sea interactions related to hurricanes and winter storms, estuarine-shelf exchange processes, surface sediment transport, coastal upwelling, and ocean climatology. She has experience in the application of visible, thermal, and microwave (SAR) satellite measurements. In recent years, she has focused on understanding Loop Current frontal eddy cyclone impacts on circulation and on ocean-atmosphere interactions that impact hurricane intensity changes. She has a B.S. in Marine Zoology (Duke University), an M.S. in Marine Sciences (Louisiana State University), and a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography (University of Cape Town, South Africa). She spent a 2-year “sabbatical” with her husband starting in 1989 (after her Ph.D.), sailing their 32-foot sailboat from Cape Town to the Gulf of Mexico, with a 6-month research experience in the West Indies Marine Lab, U.S. Virgin Islands, studying Hurricane Hugo’s impacts on the corals of St Croix. Her hobbies include scuba diving, photography, hiking, bicycling, and gardening.