Personnel

Faculty

Robert Dickinson Professor Education: Ph.D., Meteorology, M.I.T, 1966 ; M.S., Meteorology, M.I.T, 1962; B.A., Chemistry and Physics, Harvard University, 1961. Research Interests: Climate modeling, climate variability and change, aerosols, the hydrological cycle and droughts, land surface processes, the terrestrial carbon cycle, data assimilation, and the application of remote sensing data to modeling of land surface processes. Bio: Dr. Robert Dickinson joined the Department of Geological Sciences in August of 2008. For the previous 9 years, he was Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and held the Georgia Power/ Georgia Research Alliance Chair at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the 9 years before that, was Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Regents Professor at the University of Arizona, and for the previous 22 years a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 1988, to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2002, and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2006.

Research Scientist

Muhammad Shaikh Research Scientist Associate III Education: Ph.D., University of Arizona, 1996; M.S., University of Arizona, 1991; B.S., University of Engineering & Technology, 1978. Research Interests: Shaikh comes from Toronto Canada and received his doctorate in the area of global climate modeling. His interest topics are high resolution modeling, land-atmospheric interactions, carbon-nitrogen cycles in climate models and climate data analysis. He is currently working on development of a three dimensional canopy radiation model.

Post Doctoral Fellows

Bing Pu Education: Ph.D., Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, 2011; M.S., Meteorology, Peking University, 2007; B.S., Information Management & Information System, Nanjing Institute of Meteorology, 2004. Research Interests: Bing has been interested in diagnostic and modeling studies of climate variations on regional scales (China, Africa, N and S America). She has specialized in the processes coupling land and atmosphere, using the WRF regional model and the CAM/CLM atmosphere, and land models. In her post-doctorate work, she has studied how leaf physiology/stomatal functioning, and its control on ET contributes to global warming and changes global patterns of precipitation, in particular an increase over much of the tropics (Pu and Dickinson 2012, 2013). She has initiated new studies of the land controls on Great Plains patterns of precipitation through dynamic controls on vertical motion (e.g. Pu and Dickinson, 2013).

Ying Sun Education: Ph.D., Geological Sciences, University of Texas, Austin, 2013; B.S., Remote Sensing, Beijing Normal University, China, 2008. Research Interests: Ying Sun received her bachelor’s degree in GIS and remote sensing at Beijing Normal University in China and PhD from University of Texas. The title of her dissertation is “Role of mesophyll CO2 diffusion and large-scale disturbances in the interactions between climate and carbon cycles “. Her interest topics include the impact of extreme weather events and climate variability on vegetation and the terrestrial carbon cycle.

Students

	Wenting Fu Education: B.S., Nanjing University of science and technology, 2010. Research Interests: Wenting’s research interests are land surface modeling and land-atmosphere interaction dynamics, and the terrestrial carbon cycle. She is currently developing a global model of carbonyl sulfide.
	Binyan Yan Education: M.S., Photometry and Remote Sensing, Peking University, China, 2011; B.S., Geographical Information System, Peking University, China, 2008. Research Interests:  She has been interested  in the retrieval of vegetation ecological parameters including LAI and fAPAR from remotely sensed data. Now she is modeling plant root processes in CLM, especially dynamic root growth

Staff

David Spindler Senior Systems Administrator Education: ABD, Computer Engineer (High Performance Computing), University of Texas at Austin; M. S., Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin 1998; B. S., Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, 1996. Duties: David helps to develop and support high performance computing within the department, both distributed cluster computing and parallel computing.

Past Colleagues

Kaicun Wang has Bachelors, Masters and Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences. Dr. Wang worked as Research Scientist Associate V in our group in 2009-2010. With 43 publications in highly regarded science journals, Kaicun is an internationally recognized scientist. His areas of interests are: Hydro-climatology and global climate change, modeling and observations of terrestrial and pan evaporation, irrigation scheduling and drought monitoring, global air pollution, clouds and their interaction with radiation and global land surface radiation budget.  Currently, he is a professor and chief scientist at College of Global Change and Earth System Sciences, Beijing Normal University, China.

Jamie Wentz: An artist and photographer with bachelor’s in Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin. From November 2008 through June 2013, she worked as an Admin Assistant with our research team. Currently, she works as Executive Assistant at The Nature Conservancy, a non-profit organization, in Austin Texas.

Past Students

Lacey Pyle: Graduated MS, Aug 2012. Thesis title: Isolating the effect of mineral-organic interactions on the decomposition of recalcitrant organic soil carbon. Currently PhD student in department of Earth Sciences, Rice University, Houston TX.

Kai Wang: Graduated MS, Aug 2013. Thesis title: Evaluation of a land surface solar radiation partitioning scheme using remote sensing and site level FPAR datasets. Currently working in Houston TX.

Ying Sun: Graduated PhD, May 2012. Dissertation title: “Role of mesophyll CO2 diffusion and large-scale disturbances in the interactions between climate and carbon cycles”. Her interest topics include the impact of extreme weather events and climate variability on terrestrial carbon cycle. Currently working as post-doctorate fellow in Dickinson group.

Hua Yuan: Graduated PhD, July 2013. He was a visiting scholar to our group from Nov 2010 through Mar 2013. During his stay at JSG, he worked on developing 3D canopy radiation in CLM model (Yuan et al. 2013, J. Climate, Accepted). Currently , he has a post-doctorate position at Beijing Normal University, China.