Seeking a PhD student who is eager to work in a multi-disciplinary environment on climate change and impact assessment problems (e.g.: drought, wildfire, smoke and public health, habitat, property risk, water resources). The doctoral training will be anchored in the Environmental Systems graduate program (http://es.ucmerced.edu/ ) and dissertation work will be co-advised by faculty from the Management of Complex Systems department (http://mist.ucmerced.edu ).
Candidates should demonstrate basic computational skills (e.g. in R, Python, Mathematica, or C; a skill set in machine learning, parallel/GPU-processing, data visualization, or web applet development would be a major plus) that will be further developed around data-oriented and simulation-oriented methods. The grand challenge we are facing is how to use large-scale climate change analysis to assess short and long-term impacts on coupled human-environment systems - e.g. pertaining to watershed and wildfire problems in California; A corollary problem is how to most effectively communicate the results to select (academic, for-profit, non-profit, policy-maker) and broad audiences.
Interested students should contact Dr. A. Leroy Westerling (awesterling@ucmerced.edu; htt
