Sylvia Dee is an assistant professor and climate scientist at Rice University specializing in atmospheric modeling, water isotope physics, and paleoclimate data-model comparison. She completed her undergraduate degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering with certificates in Geological Engineering and Environmental Sciences at Princeton University, and her Ph.D. at the University of Southern California Earth Sciences department. She previously held postdoctoral fellowships at the UT Institute for Geophysics and Brown University.
Sylvia's research projects include topics in climate modeling and climate of the past millennium, using general circulation models (GCMs) and proxy system models (PSMs) to explore the dynamics of the tropical climate system.
Sylvia is the developer of the water isotope-enabled, fast-physics atmospheric dynamical model, SPEEDY-IER, and a public platform for proxy system modeling development, PRYSM. This modeling platform allows for multi-centennial simulations of common era climate with water isotope physics, which, coupled with proxy system models for proxy records, facilitates the comparison of model output to paleoclimate data.
Dr. Xiaojing Du is a postdoctoral researcher and paleoclimatologist at Rice University. She integrates proxy measurements, climate model simulations, and instrumental observations to understand the hydroclimate variability on interannual to orbital time scales from the LGM to present. She is particularly interested in tropical hydroclimate changes and the teleconnections between tropics and extratropics. Her work has investigated the cause of hydroclimate changes over the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool during the last deglaciation, and the relationship between ENSO and Southern California precipitation over the Holocene. At Rice, she plans to investigate the evolution of the ENSO-Asian monsoon relationship over the Common Era. Xiaojing earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Before joining Rice, she was a Voss Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University.
Personal website: https://xiaojingdu.weebly.com/
Dr. Na Wang is a postdoctoral scholar at Rice. Her research interests include
large-scale atmospheric circulation, climate dynamics, and paleoclimate
modeling. She is currently working on a project about changes in the
relationship between ENSO and Asian monsoon over the last 2000 years. Na
obtained a B.S. in Atmospheric Sciences at Nanjing University in 2015 and a
Ph.D. in Meteorology at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese
Academy of Sciences in 2020.
Dr. Lizzie Wallace is a joint Rice Academy and Pan Postdoctoral Fellow studying the interplay between climate and hurricane activity on long timescales. Her current research focuses on integrating natural archives of local hurricane strikes in the Atlantic with hurricane model data to study how and why hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico have changed over the past 2000 years. Lizzie received her B.S. from the University of Virginia in Civil Engineering and Philosophy in 2015 and her PhD in Paleoceanography from MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 2020.
Dr. Kyle Niezgoda is a Postdoctoral Scholar studying the role of parameterization schemes on shallow convection in climate models. He received a B.S. in Environmental Science and Mathematics from Emory University in 2014, and a PhD in Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences from Oregon State University, where his research broadly focused on the use of water isotopes in general circulation models as tools for model validation and paleoclimate reconstruction. Kyle was born in Delaware, and enjoys board games, skiing, playing the drums, and good food.
Xinyue Luo is a third-year Ph.D. student at Rice working in the Climate Lab. She graduated from Nanjing University with a B.S. in Atmospheric Science. Xinyue is interested in climate variability and climate dynamics. She is currently working on a project about ENSO and its teleconnections in North America.
Charlie Marshall is a second year Ph.D. student at Rice working in the Climate Lab. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. in Math. He is interested in climate modeling and climate dynamics. He is currently working on a project that compares different proxies and models of tropical African climate since the Last Glacial Maximum
Kelsey Murphy is a first year Ph.D. student at Rice working in the Climate Lab. She graduated from the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, and is a Boston native. Her research explores the evolution of the Mississippi River basin's large-scale hydrology over time.