V. Rao Kotamarthi

Atmospheric Scientist and Manager, Climate Research Section, Environmental Science Division

Argonne National Laboratory

Areas of Expertise:

  • Spatial and temporal evolution of greenhouse gases and aerosols
  • Development and evaluation of climate models
  • Global and regional scale models of aerosols and atmospheric chemistry

Kotamarthi has over 20 years of experience in modeling and analysis of atmospheric chemical and physical process. He spent five years as a research scientist at AER, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts, before joining Argonne National Laboratory in November 1996.

His current research interests are in developing coupled models for regional scale climate studies; new approaches for using sparse, point observations related to climate for model evaluation; developing process-scale models of aerosols and their impact on climate; developing methods for model inversion and data assimilation into atmospheric trace gas models; ensemble kalman filter methods and adjoint models for trace and aerosol data assimilation; biogeochemical models and carbon storage changes from shifts in land use patterns; and integrated models for climate assessments. He is also the lead PI of an international and multi-institutional field study funded by DOE to generate a reference data set to evaluate the aerosol-cloud interactions over the Ganges valley region of India.

Recent Publications

Wang, Jiali, F. N. U. Swati, Michael L. Stein, and V. Rao Kotamarthi. "Model performance in spatiotemporal patterns of precipitation: New methods for identifying value added by a regional climate model." Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 120, no. 4 (2015): 1239-1259.

Grant, Shanique L., Myoungwoo Kim, Peng Lin, Kevin C. Crist, Saikat Ghosh, and V. Rao Kotamarthi. "A simulation study of atmospheric mercury and its deposition in the Great Lakes." Atmospheric Environment 94 (2014): 164-172.

Riojas, Juanita, Hayder Abdul-Razzak, and Rao Kotamarthi. "Analyzing Mexico City's Air Quality Data to Better Understand the Sources, Sinks, and Chemical Modification of Black Carbon Aerosols." International Journal of Climate Change: Impacts & Responses 3, no. 1 (2012).

Hao Zhang

Department Head, Professor of Statistics, Professor of Forestry and Natural Resources

 

 

Research Interests:

  • Asymptotics
  • Environmetrics
  • Risks and Insurance
  • Spatial Statistics
  • Statistical Computing
  • Time Series Analysis

My current research is primarily in the analysis of spatial and space-time data. These kinds of data are being observed in many fields such as climatology, geophysics, geology, natural resources, agriculture, health sciences, economics and marketing. Technological advances have made it feasible to collect and archive space-time data at large scales that were not possible in just a decade ago. These massive and correlated data create challenging and interesting statistical problems, and demand innovative computational and methodological research.

Tanu Malik

Fellow, Computation Institute, University of Chicago

 

 

 

Tanu's research is in the area of database systems, focusing on challenges in big data analytics and metadata management. Her current research is focused on data provenance, design of scientific dataspaces, and evaluation of systems for data-intensive computing. Tanu has worked with scientists from several domains: astronomers, chemical engineers, geoscientists and cosmologists, and contributed novel methods and technologies to their data lifecycle.

She has a PhD and Masters in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Nathan Matteson

Assistant Professor, School of Cinematic Arts, DePaul University

Computation Institute

Areas of Expertise:

  • Design
  • Interactive Media

Nathan is an Assistant Professor in the School of Design’s Graphic Design department. He received his BFA from the University of Tennessee and his MFA from the University of Chicago. He has been teaching and working in Chicago since 1999. His work pointedly ignores commonly accepted boundaries amongst disciplines. Currently he is obsessed with computational methods of typeface generation and letterform modification. He is also a founding member of the product design collaboration Obstructures, and works with the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago designing and building web application interfaces for datasets and mathematical models.

 

Raffaele Montella

RMontella-Imp.png

Assistant Professor, University of Naples Parthenope

Argonne National Laboratory

Areas of Expertise:

  • Environmental Modeling
  • Grid Computing
  • Cloud Computing

Dr. Raffaele Montella works as assistant professor, with tenure, in Computer Science at Department of Science and Technologies, University of Naples “Parthenope”, Italy since 2005. He got his degree (MSc equivalent) in (Marine) Environmental Science at the University of Naples “Parthenope” in 1998 defending a thesis about the “Development of a GIS system for marine applications” scoring with laude and an award mention to his study career. He defended his PhD thesis about “Environmental modeling and Grid Computing techniques” earning the PhD in Marine Science and Engineering at the University of Naples “Federico II”.
The research main topics and the scientific production are focused on tools for high performance computing, such as grid, cloud and GPUs with applications in the field of computational environmental science leveraging on his experiences in embedded/mobile/wearable/pervasive computing and internet of things. He joined the CI/RDCEP of the University of Chicago as Visiting Scholar and as Visiting Assistant Professor working on the FACE-IT project.

Research Projects

FACE-IT

Todd Munson

Co-PI, RDCEP 1 (2010-2015)

Scientist, Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory

Fellow, Computation Institute, University of Chicago

Areas of Expertise:

  • Algorithms for numerical optimization and equilibrium problems
  • Applications of mathematical programming
  • Linear algebra for large sparse systems

Munson's primary research focus is algorithms and applications of optimization and complementarity. He has worked on several generalized Newton methods for solving complementarity problems, including PATH, the most widely used software for solving these problems, and parallel semi-smooth methods in TAO, the Toolkit for Advanced Optimization. He has also worked on special-purpose algorithms for solving support vector machines and mesh shape-quality optimization problems and is currently developing methods for structured optimization problems such as those encountered in PDE-constrained optimization and economics.

Munson has been involved in a number of projects that make computational tools available to researchers. For example, NEOS (Network Enabled Optimization System) is a multi-institutional project that provides access to over fifty solvers of academic and commercial optimization packages through an assortment of Internet interfaces. NEOS processes over 400,000 job requests annually from academic, commercial, and government institutions.

Munson received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Research Projects

CIM-EARTH | MagPIE

Students

Theo Kulczycki

Former Students and Postdoctoral Scholars

Sou-Cheng ChoiAman Chitkara | Santiago Munoz


Alan Sanstad

Senior Researcher, Computation Institute, University of Chicago

Affiliate Staff Scientist, Environmental Energy Technologies Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Affiliate Researcher, Energy & Resources Group, University of California – Berkeley

 

Areas of Expertise:

  • Economics and policy analysis
  • Energy efficiency and greenhouse gas mitigation

Alan H. Sanstad is a Staff Scientist in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Sanstad received the A.B. degree in Applied Mathematics, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Operations Research, from the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Sanstad’s research and publications have included work on the economics and policy analysis of end-use energy efficiency, technological change in energy-economic simulation modeling, and integrated assessment of global climate change. His recent work has focused on developing new approaches to long-run quantitative modeling and decision-making under uncertainty pertaining to energy system transitions, large-scale greenhouse gas abatement, and other issues in the energy, environmental, and technology policy arenas. Dr. Sanstad has also worked with the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, the California Energy Commission, the U. S. Department of Energy, and non-governmental organizations in developing and implementing research strategies, policies, and projects on energy, greenhouse gas mitigation, and related topics, and has taught in Berkeley’s Graduate Group in Energy & Resources

Research Projects

Robustness in Economic Models with Climate ChangeModel uncertainty and energy technology

Former Students

Mark Woolley

Leonard Smith

Professor of Statistics, London School of Economics

Visiting Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Chicago

 

 

Areas of Expertise:

  • Theory of nonlinear dynamical systems: Indistinguishable states, model estimation and system analysis
  • Construction and evaluation of ensemble forecasting systems of actual systems
  • Forecast interpretation for decision support in energy, insurance and other sectors on weather, seasonal and climate timescales

Smith serves as the Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Time Series (CATS) at the London School of Economics. Smith received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida and PhD in Physics from Columbia University.

He has held visiting or fixed term research positions at Cambridge (UK), École Normale Superior (France), Warwick (UK) and Potsdam University (Germany). Since 1992 he has been a Senior Research Fellow (mathematics) at Pembroke College and Research Associate, Mathematics Institute, University of Oxford, (UK), and also became a Professor of Statistics (Research) at the London School of Economics (LSE) in October 2004.

Smith has held grants funded by many bodies including ONR (US Office of Naval Research) and NOAA (US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) as well as from Australia, the European Commission and the UK Research Councils. Smith was active in the formation of strategy for THORPEX (he was co-author of the Socio-Economic Impacts Chapter) and the original experimental design(s) of climateprediction.net.

His interest in the public understanding of science led to a Selby Fellowship from the Australian Academy of Sciences. In recognition of his contributions to mathematically-coherent, user-relevant developments in meteorology, the Royal Meteorological Society awarded Professor Smith its Fitzroy Prize in 2003.

Research Projects

Model Evaluation and Fidelity | Shadowing

Former Students and Postdoctoral Scholars 

Hailiang Du | Ana Lopez

Michael Stein

Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor, Department of Statistics

College Master, Physical Sciences Collegiate Division

University of Chicago

Areas of Expertise:

  • Spatial-temporal processes
  • Statistical approaches to processing large environmental data

Stein graduated from MIT in 1980 with a B.S. in mathematics and received his M.S. and Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford in 1982 and 1984. After spending a year at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, he joined the faculty at the University of Chicago, where he is now the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor of Statistics. He was chairman of the department from 1998 to 2001.

Most of Stein's research has been in the area of spatial statistics and its applications to environmental sciences and astrophysics. He was the director of CISES (Center for Integrating Statistical and Environmental Science), funded by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Updates to my profile:

Research Projects

Climate variability | Climate emulation | Climate model fidelity | Climate variability: statistics and observation based simulationsPrecipitation characteristics: Present and future | Climate extremes | Temperature quantiles

Students and Postdoctoral Scholars

Chen Chen | Matz Haugen
 

Former Students and Postdoctoral Scholars

Bill Leeds | Stefano Castruccio | Feifei Crouch | Grant Wilder | Won Chang | Whitney Huang | Jingyu Bao | Andrew Poppick | Mark He | Aidan Sadowski

Jevgenijs Steinbuks

Economist

Development Research Group

World Bank

Areas of Expertise:

  • Global land use modeling
  • Energy demand and efficiency
  • Applied computational economics and econometrics

Steinbuks is a research associate in the Center for Global Trade Analysis at Purdue University, the home of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), where he currently works on an optimal allocation of global land use under uncertainty and irreversibility constraints. His other research interests include the economic analysis of energy and climate policies, energy efficiency, inter-fuel substitution, renewable energy and the electric power. Steinbuks has an extensive experience in a variety of applied computational and econometric methods.

Before joining the Center for Global Trade Analysis, he was a researcher at the Electricity Policy Research Group, University of Cambridge, and served as a consultant to the World Bank. Steinbuks received his PhD in Economics from the George Washington University in 2008.

Research Projects

FABLE

David Weisbach

weisbach_175.jpg

Walter J. Blum Professor, the Law School, University of Chicago

Director, Law & Economics Program, University of Chicago

Areas of Expertise:

  • Entitlements
  • Law and Economics
  • Tax Law

Weisbach received his Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1985; a Certificate for Advanced Studies in Mathematics from Wolfson College, Cambridge, in 1986; and a JD from Harvard Law School in 1989. After graduating from law school, Weisbach clerked for Judge Joel M. Flaum of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and worked as an associate in the law firm of Miller & Chevalier. In 1992 Weisbach joined the Department of Treasury where he worked as an attorney-advisor in the Office of the Tax Legislative Counsel and, subsequently, as associate tax legislative counsel. In 1996 Weisbach was appointed Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown Law Center and joined the Chicago faculty in 1998.

Research Projects

Trade and Carbon Taxes | Endogenous Technical Change in IAMs | Social cost of carbon and methane | Chicago Climate Online | webDICE | Optimal Timing of Energy Transition

Students

Adriana Ciccone | Misung Ahn | Jillian Durkin | Katrina Lewis

Former Students

Jeremy Klavans | Mark Woolley | Federico Simon | Aidan Sadowski | Hsin-Yi Chen | Matt Gee | Runnan Yang | Jeremy Archer

Victor Zhorin

Research Scientist

Computation Institute

University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory

 

Victor V. Zhorin began his work as a theoretical physicist and an associate professor working on developing first principles quantum-mechanics foundations for a new class of infrared laser materials with mixed type of chemical bonding. Those materials were proven to be of importance for applications in laser communication, femtosecond and microchip laser design.

He was invited by the Argonne National Laboratory (DOE) to work on estimation of long-term radiation damage effects in high-level nuclear waste forms. Research showed that self-healing processes in solid-state matrix partially offset the structural damage around radioactive centers.

Recently, he is involved in economics research to analyze the role of financial systems in developing economies by using advanced structural models of economic growth with financial sector and occupation choice.

Research Projects

Robustness in Economic Models with Climate Change | Climate Variability: Model Comparisons

Ian Foster

Principal Investigator, RDCEP 

Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Chicago

Director, Computation Institute, Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago    

Associate Director, Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory

 

Areas of Expertise:

  • Computer Science: Collaborative computing
  • Computer Science: Grid computing
  • Computer Science: High-performance computing

Foster develops tools and techniques that allow people to use high-performance computers in innovative ways. He co-invented grid computing, which has become the de facto computation standard for data-intensive, mutli-institution collaboration. As director of the Computation Institute, Foster brings together computational scientists and discipline thought leaders to work on a wide range of projects, with computation as a key component. He oversees the Distributed Systems Laboratory (DSL), which operates at both the University of Chicago and at Argonne National Laboratory. The DSL serves as the nexus of the multi-institutional Globus Project, a research and development effort that provides the advances required to make collaborative computing successful in science, engineering, business and other areas. Globus technologies are used by thousands of researchers worldwide and form the basis of several dozen national and international collaborative computing projects.

In March 2006, Foster was appointed director of the Computation Institute, a joint project between the University and Argonne that addresses the most challenging computational and communications problems arising from a broad range of intellectual pursuits.

Foster's honors include the Lovelace Medal of the British Computer Society and the Gordon Bell Prize for high-performance supercomputing.

Research Projects

FACE-IT | pSIMS | Parched Earth | ShadowingCIM-EARTH | SOLE | GGCMIEvaluating the utility of dynamical downscaling in agricultural impacts projections | InterSectoral Impacts Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (ISI-MIP) | 

Former Students and Postdoctoral Scholars

Sou-Cheng Choi | Quan Tran Pham | Adriana Ciccone | Jeremy Archer

Alison Brizius

Executive Director, Center for Robust Decision making on Climate and Energy Policy

Computation Institute

University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory

 

Alison Brizius is the Executive Director of the Center for Robust Decision making on Climate and Energy Policy and a member of the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory.  Alison's interests center on developing innovative and sustainable approaches to improving the quality and accessibility of scientific information for public policy decision-making. Prior to joining RDCEP, she was the policy and special projects manager for the Chicago Council on Science and Technology (C2ST).  There she led a broad range of activities designed to increase public understanding of science policy issues of national importance.  Alison received her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago in 2011 where she helped design, construct, test and analyze data from a microwave telescope and detector array based at the Chajnantor Observatory, in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.  This experiment (QUIET) was designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the characteristics of which have the potential to elucidate the structure and evolution of the early universe.  She received her B.S. in Physics from Stanford University and her M.S. in Physics from the University of Chicago.  

Research Projects

FACE-IT | webDICE | Energy Inventory | Chicago Climate Online | Climate Emulator | RPS

Recent RDCEP Publications:

Recent RDCEP Presentations and Workshops:

  • “FACE-IT: Framework to Advance Climate Economic and Impacts Investigations with Information Technology.” Next Generation Agricultural Systems Models Part 2, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Washington, D.C. January 29, 2015.
  • “Introduction to FACE-IT for AgMIP.” AgMIP Phase 2 Fundamentals Workshop, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. June 29, 2015.
  • "Information intensive research initiatives at the Center of Robust Decision making on Climate and Energy Policy." Workshop on Research Information Technologies and their Role in Advancing Science, University of Chicago, May 2014.