Pascale Garaud completed her PhD in Astrophysics at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2001. She then became a fellow of New Hall (now Murray-Edwards College) and a PPARC fellow, and continued her post-doctoral research jointly at the Institute of Astronomy and the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of Cambridge. She joined the AMS faculty at UCSC in July 2004, and continues her research on various aspects of fluid dynamics applied to astrophysics and geophysics. She was the recipient of an NSF CAREER award in 2009, and is the founding director of the International Summer Institute for Modeling in Astrophysics (ISIMA).
She uses large-scale computer simulations to study the fluid flows in astrophysical and geophysical systems. The geophysical applications have direct relevance to modeling the ocean, rivers and lakes. She is also the founding director of a new summer school in astrophysics that uses a novel collaborative approach to teaching graduate students.