“Climate change was an academic inevitability, an intuitive truth, and a promise of job stability,” explains Henri Drake ’15, who graduated magna cum laude and with honors in mathematics.
Starting in June, Drake will begin work as a research specialist at Jorge Sarmiento’s oceanography laboratory at Princeton University for a year. He will be assisting postdoctoral fellow Adele Morrison with her three-year project on Southern Ocean circulation. This research has important implications for assessing how ocean models work in the Southern Ocean, which is the southernmost waters of the world ocean encircling Antarctica.
Drake has been interested in climate science ever since high school, when he spent his vacations in the increasingly glacier-free Sierra Nevada Mountains. But his liberal arts education enabled him to gain a broad yet in-depth understanding of climate science. While at Haverford he learned about the enhanced effects of CO2 on salt marshes, and studied the relationship of Zen Buddhist poets with the environmental activism of the Beat generation.
Drake intends to pursue a Ph.D. in oceanography and has begun looking for potential advisors who work in ocean circulation. His dream is to eventually become a research professor at one of the University of California campuses.
“My friends, colleagues, and mentors tell me that my thoughts are sporadic,” he says. “I hope to embrace what many might consider a criticism and apply it to bring some innovation to the field of physical oceanography.”
–By Hina Fathima ’15
“Where They’re Headed” is a blog series reporting on the post-collegiate plans of recent Haverford graduates.