Emily Beam

Emily Golden Beam is a PhD candidate working with Dr. Joanna Lambert. She focuses on how to study predator behavior in the Anthropocene both non-invasively and in ways that honor all stakeholders. Her work primarily takes place in the American West. Website: http://emilygoldenbeam.com/

Aditi Bhaskar

Aditi Bhaskar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.  

Dr. Bhaskar specializes in changes to water resources that accompany urban development with a focus on interactions between streams, groundwater, stormwater, and urban irrigation. 

Bhaskar received a Sc.B. in Geology-Physics/Math from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Then, Dr. Bhaskar was an National Science Foundation Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow, which took her to the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia.  Dr. Bhaskar was at Colorado State University for 6 years where she was a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award before joining CU in 2023. 
 

Xuanyu Chen

Xuanyu is a physical oceanographer interested in understanding ocean's imprints on the atmospheric boundary layer and in improving their representations in numerical weather prediction and climate models.

Marianne Davenport

Marianne Davenport is a dedicated forest entomologist contributing her expertise to the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States Forest Service (USFS) at the Lakewood Service Center. In her role with Forest Health Protection, Marianne applies her comprehensive knowledge of entomology, familiarity with the unique ecosystems of the Rocky Mountain Region, and proficiency in spatial analytics to advance the mission of the USFS. Marianne's career with the Forest Service spans several key roles, including serving as an Aerial Surveyor/Biological Scientist at the Regional Office, Aerial Survey Program, and earlier positions as a Biological Science Technician at the Lakewood Service Center dating back to 2017.

Prior to joining the Forest Service, Marianne played a valuable role in United States Geological Survey projects, particularly examining forest fuel changes along Colorado's front range after the last mountain pine beetle epidemic. Her commitment to the field is underscored by her academic achievements, culminating in a Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Colorado in May 2020. Her thesis, titled “Variability in Adult Reproductive Diapause of the Spruce Beetle, Dendroctonus rufipennis,” reflects her commitment to advancing scientific understanding in the field of forest entomology.

Marianne's journey in forest entomology began in 2015 during a transformative research experience as a community college student. This early exposure not only fueled her passion for the field but also instilled a deep appreciation for collaboration, effective communication, and partnerships in achieving common goals. Throughout her academic and natural resource career, Marianne has remained dedicated to fostering positive contributions aligned with the USFS mission to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands for the benefit of present and future generations.

Nicholas Dragone

Nick is a Postdoc at CIRES in the Fierer Lab. His research focus on using genomics techniques to study the how organisms survive in challenging environments, mainly Antarctic soils and volcanic systems. Prior to arriving at CU Boulder, Nick worked as a marine biologist studying microplastic trash in the Pacific Ocean.

Ulla Heede

Dr. Ulla Heede joined the Oceans and Climate Lab in Fall 2022 as a CIRES Postdoctoral Fellow. She completed her Ph.D. in Earth & Planetary Sciences at Yale; her research is on tropical climate dynamics, especially toward understanding how the tropical Pacific coupled ocean-atmosphere system responds to anthropogenic radiative forcing. Ulla completed her undergraduate education at the University of Cambridge (UK). As a graduate student at Yale, her research combining satellites and climate models was recognized by NASA through the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) fellowship. Since then, Ulla has been conducting climate change research at University of Colorado and is now running ocean models at [C]Worthy.

 Ulla is passionate about the knowledge about the climate, how it can help develop climate solutions, and how academic research can help inform policy makers and the private industry. Ulla grew up in Denmark and is now in Colorado. Ulla loves rock climbing, skiing and hiking with her dog.

Jonathan Henn

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher working with Marko Spasojevic and Katie Suding to characterize long-term change in alpine plant communities. Previously, I was a Postdoc with Anne Bjorkman at the University of Gothenburg on arctic plant responses and adaptation to climate change. I completed my PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Damschen Lab. I studied how functional traits can help explain plant responses to factors like climate change, species invasions, and changing disturbance regimes. Overall, my research focuses on these issues to improve the restoration and management of ecosystems under rapidly changing conditions. In addition to doing research, I actively work on developing effective mentoring, teaching, and outreach skills because I believe that scientists need to be effective mentors, teachers, and communicators to help cultivate the next generation of scientists and engaged citizens.

• Alexandra Emond ( RECCS cohort 2022 )

Alex Hewett

Alex is an associate scientist within the Assimilation and Verification Innovation Division (AVID) of the NOAA Global Systems Laboratory (GSL). His work is with the Forecast Impact and Quality Assessment Section (FIQAS) team, where he evaluates aviation weather products and performs core research to investigate techniques and data sources for forecast verification.

Alex previously served six years in the US Navy as a search and rescue swimmer and helicopter aircrew. He then studied for a few years at San Diego Community College, where he did internships with NASA and Northrop Grumman, before transferring to the University of Washington, where he completed a B.S. with honors in atmospheric sciences and meteorology and conducted research with NOAA PMEL and his university department. He then spent a brief period as an operations engineer at SpaceX before making his to NOAA/CIRES.

Ethan Knight

Ethan is an environmental scientist and the communications lead for Western Water Assessment. In this role, he developed and is leading the implementation of WWA's communications plan. He also developed and manages WWA’s new website and social media accounts, and co-produces WWA's newsletters and webinar series. Lastly, he conducts climate research related to water resources and natural hazards in the WWA region (Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming). Most notably, he co-produces WWA's monthly Intermountain West Climate Briefings hosted on WWA's most popular web resource, the Intermountain West Climate Dashboard, which he also manages. Ethan has always had a great interest in the environmental field and is particularly interested in climate impacts on natural resources and vulnerable communities.

Ethan first joined the WWA team in June 2019 as an undergraduate assistant primarily to help with the Colorado River Basin Climate and Hydrology: State of the Science report. Some of his work on the report included editing text and figures, creating the references, glossary, and acronyms/abbreviations sections, and surveying sponsors and stakeholders about the report’s usability and whether it can be used for research, policy-making, or decision-making processes in water management and policy. Ethan graduated from CU Boulder with a BA in Environmental Studies and a Minor in Geography in May 2020.

Elliot Lim

Elliot Lim is an Associate Scientist with the U.S. Extended Continental Shelf Project and the Digital Elevation Modeling team. 

Emmy Longnecker

Emmy received a BA in Chemistry from Smith College in 2020 and is currently an Atmospheric Chemistry PhD candidate working in Paul Ziemann's lab. Her work has included kinetic modeling, studies of indoor surface films, and fundamental mechanistic studies of atmospheric systems. When she isn't doing chemistry puzzles in lab, she plays the violin in a band, cooks with friends, and spends as much time as possible in the mountains. 

Kathryn Materna

Dr. Materna is an assistant professor in Geological Sciences interested in tectonic deformation, the earthquake cycle and the generation of seismicity. She uses space-geodetic tools such as GPS and InSAR to understand coseismic and interseismic deformation, aseismic creep, seasonal elastic loading, and induced seismicity. Her research often focuses on regions in California, such as the San Francisco Bay Area, the Mendocino Triple Junction, and the Brawley Seismic Zone, but also includes other active areas around the world. 

Susannah Morey

Susannah Morey is a geomorphologist interested in the role that extreme geomorphic events have on landscapes compared to background, everyday events. Her work combines numerical modeling with field observations and geochronology to reconstruct the impact of historic and ancient events like dam break outburst flooding and landslides. Originally from Houston, Texas, she received her undergraduate degrees in geology and literature from the University of Texas at Austin before she moved to Seattle where she received her PhD from the University of Washington. 

Skye Niles

Skye Niles joined Western Water Assessment as a postdoctoral social science researcher in 2024. Skye is focusing on how to reduce risk and improve resilience to climate hazards in mobile home park communities, with an emphasis on how researchers can work with frontline communities to better understand and address adaptation concerns. Skye specializes in environmental justice research and qualitative research methods. Prior to joining WWA, Skye participated in a variety of interdisciplinary research projects centered on how environmental hazards and inequalities are produced and challenged, including research on the intersections between environmental inequalities and prisons, and how community engagement improved health care response following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Skye completed her undergraduate degree in Social Welfare at the University of California Berkeley and her Masters and PhD in Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Chris Ray

Chris Ray studies the dynamics of plant and animal populations threatened by climate change and habitat fragmentation. Her recent projects include estimating bird trends in national parks, and her longest projects have focused on the American pika. Chris has a PhD in Population Biology and is a scientist with The Institute for Bird Populations in California and also the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at CU Boulder. She has studied pikas from here to Mongolia, and is the scientific advisor for the Colorado Pika Project, a community of volunteers who study how pikas respond to environmental change. 

Sarah Elizabeth Stockman

Sarah is currently a research assistant with the Suding lab in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department. After receiving her associates at Houston Community College, she completed her bachelors at Wellesley College where she majored in the biological sciences. She studies plant communities under global change and the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function. 

Megan Thompson-Munson

Megan worked as an undergraduate research technician in Dr. Isla Castañeda's Biogeochemistry Lab where she used organic matter preserved in lake beds to reconstruct paleoclimate conditions in the East African Rift Valley during times of important hominin evolution. During her master's, Megan's focus shifted to glaciology and Greenland Ice Sheet dynamics. Working with Dr. Neil Humphrey, she used a full-depth array of englacial sensors to quantify ice deformation in three dimensions at a site along the western margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Megan's PhD research will bridge the gap between her past experiences in climate and ice. She will be working on projects within the broad and interdisciplinary field of ice-ocean-climate interactions.

When she's not doing research, Megan enjoys hiking, camping, backpacking, and basket weaving. She is quite fond of national parks--especially Mount Rainier National Park where she worked as a park ranger in 2016 and saw her first glacier.

Kristy Tiampo

Kristy Tiampo is a Professor of Geological Sciences and the Director of the Earth Science and Observation Center (ESOC) at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado. Her research program aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the processes which govern natural and anthropogenic hazards and, in particular, those which generate earthquakes, and thus improve the associated estimates of the regional seismic hazard. She is very interested in big data and analysis of remote sensing data such as space-based Global Positioning System (GPS) data, differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR), seismicity and gravity, in order to provide critical information on the nature and scale of these hazards. Significant contributions from her research include development of the first of a new generation of seismicity measures and effective inversions for the sources of surface deformation associated with earthquake and volcanic hazard as well as anthropogenic signals.

Peter Vaillancourt

Peter Vaillancourt started as a Reanalysis & Reforecast Associate Scientist in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL) in December 2022. His research focuses on model development and data assimilation for coupled reanalysis and reforecasting using data-driven/machine learning methods and the Unified Forecast System. This includes multi-platform reproducible models at-scale on HPC systems and in the cloud, with a focus on optimization and scalability of both CPU and GPU computing. He also has a strong passion for increasing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in all areas of STEM education, academia, and in the professional workforce.

Prior to working at NOAA PSL, he was a Computational Scientist in the Center for Advanced Computing at Cornell University. While there, he developed an interdisciplinary expertise in computational science, physical modeling, applied mathematics, and statistics. A major focus of a few of his past projects was the optimization, scalability, portability, reproducibility, and automation of scientific computing and HPC applications in the cloud across a variety of scientific disciplines. At PSL, he is focusing on bringing this expertise to weather and climate models to advance our capabilities.

Peter is especially excited for the opportunity to mentor community college students through this program because he was once a community college student himself!

Samuel Yevak

Sammy has been working the Niwot Ridge LTER Limnology group since his sophomore year of
undergraduate at CU Boulder. Over the years Sammy has been involved in many Niwot Ridge
LTER projects such as the pika survey, alpine plant biomass survey, megacosm experiment,
black sand experiment, gas sampling, and NADP sampling. His main research is focused on
alpine lakes and streams and how these systems respond to a changing alpine environment.
In his free time, you can find Sammy rock climbing, surfing, enjoying live music, camping, and
hanging out with his dog.

• Kyle Greaves ( RECCS cohort 2021 )
• Brian Hertvik ( RECCS cohort 2022 )

Jianhao Zhang

Jianhao Zhang is a research scientist at Assessing the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory who will be working with a student to study the impact of nonlinearity in aerosol-cloud interactions on the projection of cloud radiative effect in a cleaner climate. 

Paul Ziemann

The primary focus of our group's research is to elucidate mechanisms by which volatile organic compounds emitted from biogenic and anthropogenic sources react in the atmosphere to form products that can create submicron-size organic aerosol particles. These reactions are complex and include photochemistry, gas-phase oxidation, and heterogeneous/multiphase reactions. The resulting particles affect global climate, visibility, and human health. We conduct experiments in large-volume environmental chambers under simulated atmospheric conditions and then identify and quantify organic gas and aerosol reaction products using a variety of analytical instruments and methods. This information is used to develop detailed, quantitative chemical reaction mechanisms for predicting organic aerosol formation, which can be used to improve air quality and global climate models. We also conduct laboratory, field, and modeling studies of indoor air chemistry.

https://www.colorado.edu/chemistry/paul-ziemann