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. Melissa was the recipient of a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in 2024.
mferriter [at] g [dot] ucla [dot] edu
Mitch Hung, PhD Student, UCLA
Mitch conducts research on the interdependence between fire regimes and vegetation dynamics under a changing climate. In general, he is interested in quantifying ecohydrological and biogeochemical processes at scale using remote sensing, numerical modeling, and explainable machine learning. He is also excited by the potential of open source software in streamlining earth systems modeling and climate data analysis.
mitchhung [at] g [dot] ucla [dot] edu
Miriam Johnston, Postdoctoral Researcher, Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies
Miriam is a global change ecologist who studies the effects of disturbance and climatic stress on plant demography and ecosystem function. As a member of the Western Wildfire and Forest Resilience Collaborative, Miriam is developing a predictive understanding of post-wildfire forest regeneration in the topographically- and hydrologically-complex landscapes of central Colorado. Miriam became an unofficial but crucial member of our group during a 6-month NSF-funded stay at UCLA in 2023 while working as postdoc with Matt Dannenberg at the University of Iowa.
johnstonm [at] caryinstitute [dot] org
Gavin Madakumbura, Postdoctoral Researcher, UCLA
Gavin graduated with his PhD in 2024 from the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA. During his PhD, he conducted research on ecohydrological impacts of climate change and climate variability, as well as observational constraints on future precipitation projections. Gavin's postdoctoral work focuses on understanding how climate and humans affect wildfire in the Western United States through observations and wildfire simulations.
gavindayanga [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. Caroline’s received a NASA FINESST grant in 2020 and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in 2021.
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
Quinn Koch, Undergraduate Researcher, UCLA
Quinn is an undergraduate majoring in Geography and Statistics and Data Science with broad interests in climate systems and their impacts on human society. He is looking to study and better understand the environment by applying the spatial and statistical thinking learned in his coursework at UCLA.
quinnkoch [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 explored the source of mineral dust aerosols and meteorological drivers of dust storms during periods of extreme aridity on the Great Plains. In her postdoc she investigated 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.
Bowen Wang, Masters Student, 2023–2024
As an undergraduate at UCLA Bowen majored in Climate Science and Geography, and he has wide interests in the physical and social impacts of climate change. During Bowen’s senior year he also earned his Masters degree through UCLA’s exclusive Departmental Scholars program. His Masters research used the WRF-Fire dynamical coupled fire-atmosphere model to investigate how invasion by non-native plants may affect wildfire in southern California.
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 is an Associate Professor at Beijing Normal University in China.
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.