Sam Levang

Sam Levang was hooked on the ocean after six weeks of tall-ship sailing with WHOI’s neighbor SEA Semester as a college student. Despite growing up in the landlocked woods of northern Minnesota, he spent much of his childhood building and messing about with boats on Lake Superior, which eventually flows to the sea.

After getting an undergraduate degree in physics, he spent some time working in a corporate research lab testing tiny electronic devices. While the projects were interesting, there were seemingly no windows in the entire building, and he often found himself daydreaming about bigger things. Physical oceanography, then, was a natural pathway.

In his spare time, Sam enjoys making or fixing just about anything, especially his friends’ boats (aka holes in the ocean they throw money into). He and his wife can often be seen on the weekends exploring the sights of New England in their rusty yellow VW Beetle. His Ph.D. advisor is WHOI physical oceanographer Ray Schmitt.