Iossif D. Lozovatsky, research professor of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences at the University of Notre Dame, passed away December 23. He was 75.
Lozovatsky was an expert in physical oceanography, and his research lab was the world’s oceans. He worked with collaborators from around the world, making more than 20 oceanographic research cruises in the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Antarctic oceans as well as the Baltic, Black, Mediterranean and China Seas.
Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Lozovatsky received a master’s degree in oceanography from Lomonosov Moscow State University and a doctorate in physics and math from the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, where he later became a full professor and lead research scientist.
Lozovatsky joined Notre Dame’s Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (EFD) as a research professor in 2010, after serving for 16 years as a research associate and research professor at Arizona State University’s Center for Environmental Fluid Dynamics. He was a long-time and close collaborator of Joe Fernando, professor of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences at Notre Dame and EFD’s director.
At Notre Dame, he carried out field measurements, data analysis, and theoretical interpretations of ocean turbulence. He was a lead investigator of the Air-Sea Interactions in the Northern Indian Ocean (ASIRI) and the Monsoon Intraseasonal Oscillations in the Bay of Bengal (MISO-BOB) projects and was a key scientist of the CASPER air-sea interaction study, collecting data from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
“I’ve worked with Iossif on several projects since 2010, including sharing a week in extremely cramped space on a converted fishing boat in the Magellan Straits,” said Scott Coppersmith, senior EFD research engineer. “He was a good guy, strong-willed and generous. He will be missed.”
Lozovatsky published more than 100 papers in international journals, covering small-scale physical oceanography and aspects of atmospheric science and fluid dynamics. He was a visiting scholar and lecturer at the University of Girona in Spain, the University of Western Australia in Perth, the Ocean University of China in Quindao, and the National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA) in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
He also was known as a gifted teacher, deepening graduate students’ understanding of their field by providing meticulous training and insightful questioning.
He is survived by his daughter, Maria Lozovatskaya.
— Karla Cruise, Notre Dame College of Engineering