Max Pierce

Max Pierce is a graduate student in mechanical engineering studying how ocean waves interact with sea ice—a topic critical to understanding climate feedback loops in the rapidly changing Arctic. His research investigates whether increasingly energetic wave activity contributes to sea ice breakup, possibly speeding up sea ice retreat and altering global shipping routes. By combining nonlinear wave theory with scalable simulations, Max is uncovering how wave-induced stresses fracture ice sheets and reshape marginal ice zones. As a MathWorks Fellow, Max will expand his use of MATLAB to model wave-ice interactions across complex floe geometries and distributions. He utilizes MATLAB’s numerical integration capabilities, parallel computing tools, and community-built libraries, such as pMATLAB, to perform large-scale Monte Carlo simulations. His work has already demonstrated that wave stress within an ice floe is primarily independent of shape, significantly simplifying future predictive models. Max’s research could redefine how scientists and policymakers model ice retreat, providing faster, more accurate insights into polar dynamics and their global consequences.