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Faculty Mentors

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Ryan Argrow

Brian Argrow (PhD 1989 Aerospace Engineering, University of Oklahoma) is Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, founding RECUV director (emeritus), and former Associate Dean for Education for the College of Engineering and Applied Science. His current research includes small UAS airframe design and sensor integration, and integration into the National Airspace System, with other research including aero/gas dynamics, and engineering education. His teaching awards include the W.M. Keck Foundation Award for Excellence in Engineering Education, and he is a University of Colorado President's Teaching Scholar (a lifetime appointment) and an inaugural fellow of the CU Center for STEM Learning. Professor Argrow co-chaired the first Symposium for Civilian Applications of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (CAUAS) in 2007 and chaired the 2nd CAUAS in 2014. He is a fellow of AIAA and  a past chair of the AIAA Unmanned Systems Program Committee. In 2009 he completed four years of service on the USAF Scientific Advisory Board, and he recently served on the NASA Advisory Council’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Subcommittee. He is currently a member of the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and he serves on the ASTM Committee F38 on UAS, F38.02 Flight Operations.

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Karen Bailey

Dr. Karen Bailey is an Assistant Professor in the department of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is interested in human-environment interactions, climate change, and sustainable rural livelihoods. She is an environmental social scientist and combines social science research with environmental and ecological data to understand feedbacks between communities and their environments, how we can build resilience to climate change, and how to support landscapes that meet human needs and sustainability goals. She also has an emphasis on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in environmental fields and STEM more broadly and is committed to research that supports, amplifies and engages the most vulnerable among us. Her current projects focus on climate adaptation in southern Africa, human health and well-being in east Africa, barriers to entry in natural resource fields, just and equitable climate change research, and human-wildlife conflict and coexistence.

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Leah Bertrand

Leah is a third-year PhD candidate in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, who previously received degrees in physics and music technology from Oberlin College and Conservatory. Their research focuses on interactions between clouds and large-scale climate, especially in the Arctic. They use observations and radiative transfer models to analyze how clouds modulate atmospheric energy flows, placing special emphasis on the power of combined radar and lidar. They are also interested in technology as a shared medium for translating climate change research into music.

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Rachel Billings

Rachel Billings is developing and using field-ready hardware and machine learning to research the behavior of vulnerable mammal species such as pika, and to characterize the potential impacts of climate change and anthropogenic activity on alpine wildlife.

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Nels Bjarke

I am currently a Ph.D student at the University of Colorado Boulder and a research assistant in the field of hydrology. My research primarily focuses on the impact that climate change is having on water resources, specifically in alpine regions that hold a vital natural reservoir of water: snow.


Nels Bjarke completed his B.S. in Earth and Planetary Science in 2014 and M.S. of Earth and Planetary Science in 2019. Nels's previous research focused on climate variability and the impact of warming regional temperatures in the southwestern US on the relationship between snow-pack and subsequent runoff season streamflow. Currently, Nels is pursuing his Ph.D. in the Civil Engineering department at CU Boulder. His research at CU Boulder is focused on catchment-scale hydrologic modeling at the Niwot Ridge LTER site. Specifically, Nels is interested in investigating the efficacy of temporal and spatial meteorological infilling techniques for application in the DHSVM hydrologic model.

 

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Lindsay Blank

Lindsay earned her M.S. in Atmospheric Science from North Carolina State University in 2017. That year, she moved to Boulder to begin her professional career at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. In 2021, she dipped her toes in the private sector and joined Spire Global. Lindsay joined the Global Systems Laboratory/Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere in 2023. Her entire career has been focused on verification, from the spatial evaluation of thunderstorms over the Great Plains to the examination of sea ice extent in the North Pole. Her work at GSL is focused on verification efforts serving the aviation community. 

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Eliza Clark

Eliza Clark is  an evolutionary ecologist and an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Biology. Clark is excited make the switch to studying plant eco-evo dynamics after their PhD on insect range expansions. Their postdoc research focuses on how adaptations to microclimates influence larger-scale range shifts in an alpine annual plant.

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Benet Duncan

Dr. Benét Duncan is the Managing Director and co-lead PI of Western Water Assessment, an applied research program housed within CIRES at the University of Colorado Boulder that addresses societal vulnerabilities to extreme weather and natural hazards in partnership with communities and decision makers. She is responsible for directing and managing the daily and long-term activities of the operations of WWA, setting strategic direction for the program in consultation with the PI team, and interfacing with sponsors and stakeholders. She also advances projects at the intersection of science and society, with a focus on better connecting scientific information related to extreme weather and natural hazards with decision-makers. 

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Nancy Emery

Associate Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; INSTAAR/Niwot LTER 

Emery’s lab works at the nexus of population biology, community ecology, and evolutionary biology to understand how plants adapt and persist in a constantly changing world. Their current research projects are specifically focused on the evolution of dispersal, habitat specialization, and phenotypic plasticity in plants that occupy variable environments.

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Emma Galofré García

Emma's dissertation research utilizes meta-analyses, spatial and statistical modeling, and field methods to study bison ecology and conservation with an emphasis on implications for Colorado and the management of spatially restricted herds. Emma approaches her work through a critical, anti-colonial, and feminist lens, which informs her research approach and relationships. With over a decade of experience in conservation, Emma has worked on projects domestically and abroad with an array of bird and mammal species in various habitats and with diverse human communities. Emma's academic interests span wildlife and plant ecology, conservation law, policy, and management, and critical and Indigenous studies. Emma prides themself on fostering enthusiasm about the things we each love and is always happy to nerd out on various topics. 

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Kara Hartig

Kara Hartig is a postdoc through the CIRES Visiting Fellows program and currently housed at SEEC on CU Boulder's East Campus. She got her PhD in Physics from Harvard University in 2024 and her bachelor's in Physics from Brown University in 2018. Her research covers extremely cold weather and extremely cold regions, with a current focus on Arctic clouds.

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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.

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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.

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McKenzie Larson

McKenzie is a fourth-year Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Ph.D. student in the synoptic meteorology group. She received her B.A. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and Physical Geography from CU in 2022. McKenzie is researching how to improve operational weather forecasts of extratropical cyclones and downslope windstorms along the Colorado Front Range by utilizing modeling and machine learning techniques. Outside of academics, she enjoys hiking, camping, skiing, playing the piccolo, watching hockey, and cooking!

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Emily Nagamoto

Emily Nagamoto is currently a M.A. student of geography who earned their Bachelors in Science degree from Duke University for Physical Geography. 

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Advyth Ramachandran

Advyth is a PhD Student at CU Boulder in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. He received his B.S. in Biology from UC Riverside. His research interests span fire ecology, plant community ecology, ecosystem ecology, urban ecology, and restoration ecology. He is also passionate about natural history and science policy. Additionally, he is broadly interested in links between plant communities and ecosystem processes, with a particular focus on applying ecological theory to land restoration and nature-based solutions. 

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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. 

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Richard Saltus

Richard works with the NOAA GEOMAG team on an update to the EMAG2 global magnetic anomaly compilation.  The goal is to improve the resolution and reliability of the compilation to improve its applicability to geologic and tectonic interpretation.

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Dr. Katherine Siegel

Dr. Katherine Siegel is an interdisciplinary environmental scientist interested in the sustainable and equitable management of ecosystems in the context of rapid environmental change. They integrate diverse quantitative and qualitative data to understand the drivers of change in complex social-ecological systems, drawing on theories and methods from conservation science, global change ecology, econometrics, and environmental data science while co-producing knowledge through collaborations with land management agencies. Much of their current work focuses on the socio-environmental impacts of changing wildfire regimes in western North America.
 

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Melissa Wagner

Dr. Melissa A. Wagner is the Associate Director of Science for Integrated Remote and In-Situ Sensing (IRISS) at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she leads scientific efforts in developing and deploying uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) technologies for atmospheric research. Her work bridges meteorology, geography, and aerospace engineering to advance understanding of severe weather impacts and dynamics. With expertise spanning UAS operations, remote sensing, machine learning, and geospatial analysis, Dr. Wagner has pioneered the use of drone-based damage surveys to characterize tornado and derecho impacts at unprecedented spatial resolutions. Her innovative research combines high-resolution UAS imagery, satellite observations, radar data, and numerical simulations to investigate the complex interactions between severe convective storms and the landscape, providing critical insights into tornado evolution, wind flow patterns, and damage mechanisms.

Dr. Wagner earned her Ph.D. in Geography from Arizona State University in 2020 and subsequently developed the UAS program at NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory, where she led transdisciplinary teams investigating severe weather events including the 2020 Midwest Derecho and numerous tornado outbreaks. Her contributions have significantly advanced damage assessment methodologies and fostered multi-agency collaborations with NOAA, NWS, FEMA, and NASA for post-event data collection and sharing. As an FAA-certified remote pilot since 2017, she has conducted extensive field campaigns and published over 20 peer-reviewed articles on severe storm impacts, establishing her as a leading expert in applying emerging technologies to operational meteorology and hazard mitigation.

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Andrew Winters

Prof. Winters is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC) at the University of Colorado Boulder and has led the synoptic meteorology research group at CU Boulder since August 2019. His research interests are broadly focused on understanding the dynamics, variability, and predictability of synoptic-scale environments conducive to the development of high-impact weather events. In his free time, Prof. Winters enjoys running, hiking, cooking, and cheering on all Wisconsin sports teams.

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