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2025 Million Dollar Club Announced; Bingham Tops $5M

  • Ben Blumenthal
  • August 27, 2025
Professor Frederick Bingham portrait.
Professor Frederick Bingham portrait.
Photo: JeffJanowski/UNCW

Research and Innovation has recognized 21 faculty and staff as the newest members of the James F. Merritt Million Dollar Club, the largest class in the award’s 21-year history. The honor celebrates individuals who have been awarded $1 million or more in external funding throughout their careers. 

Frederick Bingham, professor in the Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography, was also named the 27th member of the 5 Million Dollar Club. A closer look at Bingham’s career and a full list of 2025 Million Dollar Club inductees are below. 

Frederick Bingham | Professor | Physics and Physical Oceanography  

Bingham, a physical oceanographer who arrived at UNC Wilmington in 1994, has spent more than 30 years in his field. His research focuses on ocean salinity, the global water cycle and satellite observation of ocean salinity. Much of his funding has come from sponsors like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  

Two milestones highlight Bingham’s longstanding collaboration with NASA. In 2002, Bingham co-authored the paper Sea Surface Salinity Measurements in the Historical Database, which demonstrated the limitations of existing data for studying ocean salinity variability and helped justify NASA’s Aquarius project. Nearly a decade later, he attended the 2011 launch of the Aquarius satellite, marking a defining moment in his career. 

In 2009, Bingham was invited to join NASA’s Ocean Salinity Science Team, giving him the opportunity to become involved in a major international initiative and connecting him to collaborators around the country and across the globe. He participated in several NASA-funded efforts, like the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS) projects. His NASA involvement also inspired his work on satellite salinity error quantification in collaboration with researchers at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., resulting in 12 published papers and more than $500,000 in external grants. 

Bingham has prioritized open data and open sharing throughout his career, beginning with his data management work for the SPURS-1 and SPURS-2 projects. Last fall, he was named one of six Open Access Champions during UNCW Library and Research and Innovation’s co-hosted Open Access Week.

“My data management work has made major ocean datasets available for future generations. This is extremely important work that many people are unwilling to take on, and I am very proud of the results.” - Frederick Bingham

Today, Bingham is working on several projects linking ocean salinity to changes in seasonal patterns of rainfall, the acceleration of the global water cycle and increases in flooding and periods of drought. His past work with NASA’s Salinity and Stratification at the Sea Ice Edge (SASSIE), a field program carried out in the Arctic, has piqued his interest in high latitude oceanography and the role of salinity in the formation and melting of sea ice. He is also engaged in cross-discipline collaborations exploring the development of a commercially viable product for predicting rainfall.   

2025 Million Dollar Club Inductees 

$5 Million 

$1 Million 

See all-time Million Dollar Club inductees

This article has the following tags: Research & Innovation Area CMS - Center for Marine Science CHHS - College of Health & Human Services Accomplishments Awards & Grants CSE - College of Science & Engineering CSB - Cameron School of Business