Quick Facts
Biography
Karen Joy Heywood is a British Antarctic oceanographer best known for her work developing autonomous measurements of the Southern Ocean.
Early life and education
Heywood started was educated at the University of Bristol where she was awarded a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Physics followed by aPhD at the University of Southampton where her research investigated the heat budgets of mixed layers and was supervised by Neil Wells.
Career and research
Following her PhD, Heywood was a postdoctoral researcher at Bangor University, working on eddies caused by flow around the Indian Ocean island of Aldabra.
In 1989 Heywood was appointed a lecturer at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in physical oceanography and promoted to professor in 2005, when she became the first female professor of oceanography in the UK. Since then Heywood has trained more than 35 PhD students in a personal mission to increase the amount of observational oceanographers in the UK.
During the 1990s Heywood was heavily involved in the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE), serving as Chief Scientist of the A23 WOCE hydrographic section from Antarctica to Brazil in 1995. This sparked a lasting interest in the Antarctic and Southern Ocean water masses and formation processes, and Heywood has since led several projects in polar regions developing and maintaining a close collaboration with the British Antarctic Survey team.
Heywood has led the field in using autonomous underwater gliders and is currently leading the UEA Seaglider group as well as providing community leadership in observational oceanography and autonomous ocean observing.She was the UK's first female physical oceanography Professor.
She has participated in the following research cruises:
- RRS Discovery 145, North Atlantic, 1984, 1991
- RRS Charles Darwin, Indian Ocean, 1987
- RRS Challenger, North Sea 1988
- RV Wecoma, Eastern Pacific , 1989
- RRS Discovery, South Atlantic, 1993
- RRS James Clark Ross operated by the British Antarctic Survey, Southern Ocean,Nordic Seas, Weddell Sea and Amundsen Sea 1995-2014
Her work was exhibited at the Royal Society summer science fair in 2013.
Awards and honours
Heywood received the Georg Wüst Prize in 2009 for her work in the southern ocean. Heywood was awarded The 2016 Challenger Medal in recognition of her major contribution to physical oceanography both in the UK and worldwide; particularly for her contribution to understanding physical oceanographic processes in the Antarctic, for her work in applying novel techniques to understanding ocean processes and for her wider work in developing UK marine science, particularly within SCOR (Scientific Committee for Oceanographic Research).
The Society for Underwater Technology (SUT) presented its 2015 Oceanography Award to Heywood for her outstanding contribution to the field of oceanography. In particular because she was an early advocate for the use of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) as carriers of sensors and samplers in experiments. Her work has used sea gliders in the Antarctic, including under icebergs.
Heywood was named a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2019.
