Barbara Hickey
Barbara Mary Hickey is an Emeritus Professor of Oceanography at the University of Washington. Her research involves field measurements and computational models to understand coastal processes. She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. Early life and education. Hickey is from Canada. She studied physics at the University of Toronto, where she was encouraged by a Professor to choose a "softer" field, such as Oceanography. She earned her doctoral degree at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1975. Her doctoral research involved studying equatorial processes such as El Niño. She was involved with the first attempt to  monitor the equatorial undercurrent using moored buoys. Research and career. When Hickey started her academic career at the University of Washington she was one of only a handful of women working in physical oceanography in the United States. Hickey combines onshore sampling and offshore measurements with computational models of water movement, salinity and temperature off the coast of Washington. She also studies plankton fluorescence and offshore oxygen. She was involved with several large field and computational programs, including; Her work resulted in the development of sophisticated computer models that could predict the movement of harmful algal blooms. In 1988 Hickey  was elected President of the Ocean Sciences Section of the American Geophysical Union. Hickey was elected a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society in 1992 and the American Geophysical Union in 2014. Selected publications. Her publications include: Personal life. Hickey is married with two daughters.