From gestures and sign language to ocean waves, motion can tell us a lot about the world. Join us to kick off our first in-person taste of science San Diego event since 2019, and hear from two local scientists about their work on human language and oceanography!
Carol Padden
I'm Dean of the School of Social Sciences at UCSD, and faculty in Communication. My PhD is in Linguistics, and I study sign languages of the world.
"Multimodality in Human Language"
Most humans will grow up using a spoken language, but given certain conditions they will learn a sign language instead, or in addition. Sign languages exist nearly everywhere on the planet, including in Greenland, Iceland, Papua New Guinea and Bali. There are even cases of sign languages used by hearing people to communicate with one another. Human language is fundamentally multimodal, with as many variations of speech together with gesture and sign as there are languages around the world.
Jen MacKinnon
Physical Oceanographer
"Swirling and Churning, how ocean currents and temperature shape everything from the Arctic sea ice to Monsoons"
My research concerns small-scale turbulent processes in the ocean. Away from the surface and bottom boundary layers, most turbulent mixing is driven by breaking internal gravity waves, which in turn are largely forced by tides and winds. The net effect of this mixing is crucially important for everything from regional pollutant dispersal and nutrient budgets to global patterns of heat distribution, which is especially important in a changing climate. I spend part of my time trying to understand the complex nonlinear dynamics that control where and how internal waves break and how much turbulence is produced. This often involves ship-based fieldwork because we can watch the actual process unfold.