Edward Doddridge (Class of 2004) – Path to Antarctica
Posted on May 29, 2025
Edward Doddridge (Class of 2004) studies the ocean around the Antarctic. He shares his journey with Alison Boleyn.
What Ed did first
Edward Doddridge says he “was not the hardest-working student at Friends’”. His favourite memory from school is dating classmate Imogen (then Koolhof) (2004) in Year 10, which was important for two reasons: 1) They are now married and have a child, and 2) Imogen was a conscientious student, and improved his academic performance at Friends’. “Sitting at her table meant there was no one to act up with,” he explains.
Straight from school, Edward joined the tall ship Windeward Bound for 18 months, starting as a deckhand. Then he went to the Australian Maritime College, earned his Skipper’s Ticket and has since worked and volunteered with other tall ships. But it was when he taught himself celestial navigation while sailing to New Zealand that he realised he wanted more intellectual stimulation than his seafaring life allowed.
What Ed did next
Edward enrolled in a Bachelor of Science at UTAS. “When I got that first maths assignment, I was just so excited,” he recalls. “I felt like: This is what I want to be doing.”
Completing a double major in maths and physics, with a minor in chemistry and diploma in languages (German) took five years. He was doing his Honours in applied mathematics when, returning from a rogaining championship in WA, he met Trevor McDougall. A teammate’s dad who picked them all up from the airport, Trevor was was also an eminent oceanographer. “He explained oceanography as a way to take the applied mathematical concepts I’d been learning and use them in a real-world situation. You could make an important contribution,” remembers Edward. “He said: ‘You know what? You should do a PhD in oceanography at Oxford.’”
In 2012, that’s what Edward did. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and did his PhD in physical oceanography, researching how eddies in subtropical oceans interact with large, broad currents and move seawater vertically, from the surface down or from the abyss up.
He and Imogen moved to Boston in 2016 where he worked three years as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT. There he looked at sea ice and ocean interactions around Antarctica in the Southern Ocean, which is a kind of central hub for all the world’s oceans. Edward measured how currents were responding to changes in the wind; both greenhouse gases and the ozone hole significantly affect the roaring 40s. “Strengthening winds cool the surface of the ocean and the sea ice expands,” explains Edward. “But they also cause the warmer water that’s deeper in the ocean to be pulled up to the surface, so the sea ice dramatically decreases.”
His findings were both fascinating and heart-breaking. “It’s a common feature of oceanographic research to do some work, get a result, and think: That’s really interesting. Then 10 seconds later think: But that is terrible news,” says Edward. “Dealing with the excitement of discovery and often having it be not great news is a challenge.”
Coming home to Hobart
Choosing the problem to research at MIT was partly strategic; it would give Edward the skills and knowledge he needed to transfer to the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) in Hobart. In 2019, making it to Australia before the global pandemic, he joined IMAS as a physical oceanographer in Southern Ocean circulation.
He focuses more on the sea ice than the ocean now, driven by findings that the sea ice grew far less in 2023 than had ever been measured before. This followed several summers of record lows of sea ice.
What Ed would like to see
Edward makes it clear: his job at IMAS is not to set environmental policies. However “from a climate perspective, we know we need to get to net zero emissions, and it’s part of my job to say that loudly, as often as possible.” He’d like Australia to tackle the “low-hanging fruit” of emission reduction: lowering the upfront costs of switching to electric cars and electrifying houses, supporting public transport and cycling, and eating less meat or replacing it with low-carbon red meats such as wallaby. “There are sticky bits at the edges we don’t know how to fix yet, such as aviation,” he points out. “Nobody wants to give up flying and we don’t know how to do it sustainably yet. The flipside is it’s only two per cent of our global emissions.”
For Edward, who grew up in a former apple orchard near Sandfly, studying the environment and being out in it is a huge part of life. Outdoor Ed at The Friends’ School was formative: the kayaking trips, the bushwalking, the 12-day expeditions in his senior years. He volunteers in the wilderness with the SES search and rescue team. In January, he and Imogen took their daughter on her first overnight hike.
He says that considering the impact of one’s choices and actions was a Friends’ principle he never took terribly seriously as a teenager. He does now. “Part of what I love about my job is that I get to do all of these incredibly fun and stimulating intellectual challenges,” says Edward. “But they contribute something worthwhile to the world. I feel very lucky to be in a position like that. I get to do amazing things and good things.”
