Photo by David Kelly Crow
By Alaina O’Regan
March 20, 2025
Michelle DiBenedetto has joined Princeton University as an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Her research leverages a blend of experiments, mathematical modeling and data science to study how small things in the ocean – including microplastics, sediment, microorganisms, and renewable energy systems like wave energy converters – interact with wavy, turbulent ocean flows. She is motivated by interdisciplinary problems that are important for addressing pollution, improving ocean models and advancing environmental monitoring.
At Princeton, she’ll conduct experiments using a wave tank at Princeton's Forrestal Campus. At over 50 feet long and with the ability to generate both winds and currents, the tank will be capable of simulating realistic ocean environments. “The goal is to bring the ocean into the laboratory,” she said. The facility will also be available to other researchers, fostering collaboration across fields.
DiBenedetto said a major part of her research is studying microplastic pollution. “I’ve realized there is a gap in our fundamental knowledge surrounding how microplastic particles behave in waves and turbulence,” she said.
A key challenge her research addresses is often referred to as the “missing plastic question” – why scientists observe less plastic in the ocean than models predict. This discrepancy is thought to be due to plastics accumulating on beaches, sinking to the seafloor, breaking down, or even being carried into the atmosphere by wind. “As a research community, we still have not closed the global plastic budget,” she said. “We need to know what’s happening to plastic once it enters the ocean so that we can appropriately manage the risks while developing effective mitigation strategies.”
Plastic transport poses a challenge for large-scale ocean models. Limited computational power means scientists must often simplify small-scale ocean processes, making it hard to capture details like plastic movement accurately. DiBenedetto’s experiments help inform these small-scale models, which can improve predictions of how microplastics distribute and degrade at the ocean’s surface and make simulations more accurate.
She is also interested generally in the interactions between waves and turbulence and how they together affect transport in the ocean. One question she is tackling is how waves and turbulence alter the rate at which small particles rise or sink. “There are opposing theories about whether the sinking and rising of particles should slow down or speed up under turbulence and waves,” she said. “It turns out that the answer is not obvious.”
DiBenedetto also studies the interactions between waves and small ocean devices. This is crucial for developing models for the deployment of wave energy converters, devices that convert energy from the motion of ocean waves into power. She is particularly interested in smaller devices that provide energy for off-grid applications like ocean sensing.
She also explores how the movement of plankton, which are largely at the whim of currents, is influenced by even subtle swimming behaviors. These insights could inform bio-inspired designs for underwater robotics and enhance models predicting plankton dispersal and transport in the environment.
DiBenedetto holds a Ph.D. and master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering from Stanford University, and a bachelor’s in environmental engineering from Cornell University. After completing postdoctoral research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, she joined the University of Washington as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering in 2021. While there, she served as an associate director at the Pacific Marine Energy Center and was associated with the Environmental Fluid Mechanics group.