People
Our Team
Park Williams, Professor, Dept of Geography, UCLA
Park is a hydroclimatologist whose research aims to understand the causes and consequences of hydrological extremes such as drought. Much of his research focuses on hydroclimatology in its own right, and much also aims to improve understanding of how hydrological extremes affect life on earth (bioclimatology). Questions that he finds especially interesting involve the effects of human-caused climate change on the hydrological cycle, ecological systems, and humanity through extreme events such as heat waves, wildfires, and flooding.
williams [at] geog [dot] ucla [dot] edu
Melissa Ferriter, PhD Student, UCLA
Melissa's PhD research aims to understand the impacts of wildfire on ecosystems in the American West using remote sensing and statistical modeling. She is co-advised by Park Williams and Kyle Cavanaugh.
mferriter [at] g [dot] ucla [dot] edu
Jade Bentley, Undergraduate Researcher, UCLA
Jade is an undergraduate student interested in understanding earth systems, evolution, and human history to contextualize contemporary issues with the hope of applying that knowledge when envisioning solutions to environmental and public health crises.
jadebentley [at] g [dot] ucla [dot] edu
Caroline Juang, PhD Student, Columbia University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Caroline is an earth scientist and artist at the intersection of earth and space. Inspired by her previous work at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Caroline became interested in using satellite data and statistical methods to understand natural hazards, particularly fire activity. She is currently studying how climate and human factors affect wildfire activity in the western United States.
c.juang [at] columbia [dot] edu
Qian He, PhD Student, UCLA
Qian is interested in climate extremes and vegetation dynamics. She is working to understand how climate extremes such as drought vary under global warming and how they will impact vegetation using machine learning and remote sensing.
heqian [at] g [dot] ucla [dot] edu
Bowen Wang, Undergraduate Researcher, UCLA
Bowen majors in Climate Science and Geography, and he has wide interests in the physical and social impacts of climate change. His research uses a dynamical modeling approach and aims to investigate how invasion by non-native plants affects wildfire behaviors in California.
bowenwang23 [at] g [dot] ucla [dot] edu
Jacob Jones, PhD Student, UCLA
Jacob's research focuses on using proxy records, such as diatoms and tree rings, to reconstruct past environments. These reconstructions allow for a better understanding of underlying natural processes and how our climate may change in the future. Additional areas of research include water resource management, transboundary resource management, and environmental policy.
jbjones [at] g [dot] ucla [dot] edu
Lab Alumni
Kasey Bolles, Postdoctoral Researcher, 2018–2021
Kasey is an interdisciplinary climate scientist probing the four-dimensional dynamics of North American drought and associated exposure risks to environmental health hazards (e.g. dust storms, heat waves). Prior work has explored the source of mineral dust aerosols and meteorological drivers of dust storms during periods of extreme aridity on the Great Plains. Currently, she is investigating atmospheric circulation anomalies and land-atmosphere feedbacks linked to flash drought events in the central United States.
Kasey finished her postdoc in January 2021 and became an editor at Nature Communications.
Daniel Bishop, PhD, 2016–2021
Dan the Weather Man completed his PhD through Columbia University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Park was Dan’s lead PhD mentor. Dan’s primary research interests span hydroclimate variability, climate dynamics, forest ecology, and dendrochronology. Dan’s dissertation research considers the drivers of change in spatial and temporal hydroclimate, with an emphasis on dynamic and thermodynamic causes of decadal-to-centennial precipitation trends and variability over eastern North America. Dan now works for a catastrophe modeling firm in Boston called Karen Clark & Company.
Jatan Buch, Postdoctoral Researcher, 2021–2023
Jatan was a postdoctoral researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, funded by a fire modeling grant by the Zegar Family Foundation. Jatan’s research focused on developing a machine-learning wildfire model for the western US, published here, and a seasonal wildfire forecasting system that is in progress. Jatan is now a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University studying climate, air quality, and clouds.
Winslow Hansen, Postdoctoral Researcher, 2018–2020
Winslow is an Earth Institute Postdoctoral Fellow who seeks to anticipate new dimensions of forest futures by conducting multi-scale investigations that reveal interactions and feedbacks among forests, disturbance regimes, and climate.
Winslow finished his postdoc in December 2020 and became an Assistant Scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies.
Krishna Rao, PhD, 2019–2022
Krishna completed his PhD in the Remote Sensing Ecohydrology Group at Stanford University. He worked on monitoring ecosystem health (eg. tree mortality) using remote sensing and machine learning. Krishna’s primary advisor was Alexandra Konings at Stanford and Park Williams was a member of his PhD committee.
Sha Zhou, Postdoctoral Researcher, 2018–2021
Sha obtained her PhD from Tsinghua University in Jan., 2018. Her PhD study focuses on carbon and water exchanges between the biosphere and the atmosphere using flux tower, remote sensing and ecosystem modelling data. Sha’s work now focuses on understanding various land surface and atmospheric processes underlying extreme weather/climate events.
Sha finished her postdoc in February 2021 and became a Research Scientist at Columbia University.
Arianna Varuolo-Clarke, PhD, 2018–2023
Ari completed her PhD research at Columbia University, co-advised by Park Williams and Jason Smerdon. Her research focused on large-scale hydroclimate variability in South America using a combination of climate reconstructions, observational data, and climate model simulations. Ari now has a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship at CU Boulder and in 2025 she will begin an Assistant Professorship in the Department of Geography at Dartmouth College.