Yoshihiro Nakayama

Yoshihiro Nakayama is an Assistant Professor of Engineering at Dartmouth College's Thayer School of Engineering, specializing in polar oceanography and ice-ocean interactions. His academic cluster focuses on the Changing Polar Regions. He received his BS in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Nagoya University (2009), MA in Environmental Science from Hokkaido University (2011), and PhD in Natural Sciences from the University of Bremen (2015). His research emphasizes observational and numerical modeling approaches to study Southern Ocean dynamics, sea ice, and ice shelf interactions.

Research Interests:

• Polar ocean observations
• Numerical modeling of ocean circulation
• Model-data synthesis and data assimilation
• Ice-ocean interactions and submarine melting

Selected Awards:

• 2025 MEXT Young Scientists' Award
• 2024 AGU Cryosphere Early Career Award

His work integrates field observations (e.g., helicopter-based ocean measurements in Antarctica) with high-resolution simulations to project future ice-ocean dynamics. Current projects explore Antarctic bottom water production, submesoscale eddies' impact on ice shelves, and adjoint-based ocean state estimation. The Nakayama Research Group includes 1 doctoral and 3 master's students, focusing on atmosphere-ocean dynamics.

Teaching includes ENGS 3.1: Elementary Oceanography. He actively recruits graduate students and postdocs for projects combining fluid mechanics, programming, and Antarctic expeditions.