Paper Recognized by National Academy of Sciences for Significant, Innovative Research

Honored publication investigates air-sea gas exchange

A research paper led by Luc Deike, Associate Professor of MAE and HMEI, has been named a finalist for the prestigious 2025 Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which annually recognizes outstanding journal papers.

The paper, led by researchers at Princeton and published in 2025 the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), develops a unified framework describing how wind, waves, and bubble dynamics regulate gas exchange between the ocean and atmosphere. By improving the representation of oxygen fluxes at the air–sea interface, this work addresses a longstanding source of uncertainty in ocean modeling. The findings have important implications for understanding how the ocean absorbs and redistributes gases, including those critical to marine ecosystems and global climate regulation.

Deike, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the High Meadows Environmental Institute, studies the fundamental physics of waves, bubbles and droplets, and what happens when they interact in turbulent environments. His research has environmental applications including understanding sea spray generation, gas transfer between the ocean and air and atmospheric aerosol processes.

The paper’s co-principal investigator is Laure Resplandy, associate professor of geosciences and HMEI. The other authors are Seth M. Bushinsky, Brandon G. Reichl, Paridhi Rustogi, Rachel H. R. Stanley and Xiaohui Zhou.

Selected from more than 3,600 research articles published in PNAS in 2025, the Cozzarelli Prize honors papers that exemplify scientific excellence, originality, and broad impact. Each award-winning paper represents one of the six major classes under which the NAS is organized, with additional finalists recognized for their exceptional contributions. Established in 2005 and renamed in 2007 in honor of former PNAS Editor-in-Chief Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, the prize highlights the most significant and innovative research published in the journal each year.