Namrata Kolla -
Namrata Kolla is a 4th year student double-majoring in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Public Policy. She says that Dr. Dana Hartley, Dr. Richard Barke, and Ms. Leslie Ross have been her greatest mentors through college. Namrata is currently researching the crossroads of earth sciences and public policy, such as how to quantify the negative social effects of environmental damage or how to improve the communication between scientists and policymakers.She is also researching the predictability and long-term trends of ocean acidification with Dr. Emanuele Di Lorenzo.
Some of her notable achievements include joining the President's Scholarship Program as a "Walk-on" Stamps scholar last semester and being chosen to be part of the 113th Congress' Stennis Center program. She has also co-authored a paper with Congressman Sanford Bishop about Georgia's chicken industry. Along with being the co-chair of External Relations for the Mental Health Student Coalition for Georgia Tech she is also co-chair of Talks@Tech for Omicron Delta Kappa honor society. Talks@Tech is an initiative that brings international political leaders to campus to discuss controversial, global issues not discussed in the classroom. Namrata was also the co-chair of the SGA Sustainability Committee last year where she created the first-ever Greenovation and made Green Alliance an established component of Tech's environmental movement.
When she’s not studying or in meetings, Namrata enjoys spending time with her first-year residents as a Peer Leader (RA) in Howell Residence Hall. She goes on to say, “I also enjoy watching Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, going through TIME's Top 100 books of all-time, and trying out new physical hobbies, the most recent one being salsa-dancing."
Lauren Merrit -
Lauren Merritt is a 4th year student in Earth and Atmospheric Science concentrating in Meteorology. Her interests include severe weather, aviation, and mathematics. She first became interested in meteorology in the 4th grade when she read books about severe weather and natural disasters. Her freshman year in college she volunteered at the National Weather Service in Peachtree City, where she shadowed forecasters and learned how to launch weather balloons. During her sophomore year, she researched at GTRI in the Severe Storms Research Center in the Sensors and Electromagnetic Applications Laboratory. There she researched different audio signatures in thunderstorms. Her junior and senior year she interned at The Weather Channel and was a TA for EAS 1600. She is currently a TA for Atmospheric Chemistry and researches hurricanes with Dr. James Belanger. She is also finishing her Bachelors degree and is enrolled in the B.S./M.S. program working towards her Masters degree in Meteorology. After graduate school, she would like to work at The Weather Channel, Delta Airlines, or continue to do research in severe weather.
Sebastian Ortega Arango -
1/3/2017
The following is an exerpt from the College of Sciences story by A. Maureen Rouhi, Ph.D. Click here to read the entire story.
Sebastián Ortega graduated with Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. He came to Georgia Tech with a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He is off to Colombia to work for the weather-prediction company CFAN, and then he will apply for a postdoctoral position in Colorado.
Advice to new graduate students: Do not be afraid to approach problems from unusual perspectives.
What attracted you to study in Georgia Tech? How did Georgia Tech meet your expectations?
What attracted me most was the possibility to study weather and climate. During my senior year studying for a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, I was particularly interested in studying fluid dynamics. I had done my senior thesis in physical limnology, and I wanted to keep studying along the same lines. Weather and climate were particularly interesting for me; I cannot think of a more interesting area to study fluid dynamics.
I was encouraged to apply to Georgia Tech by Oscar Mesa, a professor in my university, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and Carlos Hoyos, a Georgia Tech alumnus who was working with Peter J. Webster. Peter and Carlos were looking for a new Ph.D. student to join their team.
When I was taking a class with Oscar Mesa, he mentioned the opportunity to study at Tech and connected me with Carlos. After exchanging a few e-mails with Carlos and other students in Peter’s lab, I applied for admission. I was very interested in the research they were doing, so I was very happy to receive an acceptance letter a few months later.
Peter has had around seven Colombian Ph.D. students over the years and has worked with many more. This is important for Colombia, because many of his former students are applying in Colombia the knowledge they gained in meteorology at Georgia Tech.
Yun Hee Park -
Yun Hee is a 3rd year graduate student working under the advisement of Dr. Irina Sokolik. Her line of research includes remote sensing and numerical modeling related to biomass burning, with recent research looking at impacts of smoke on UV fluxes. Yun Hee earned her B.A in Atmospheric Science from Yonsei University and a M.A in Atmospheric science from Univ. of Alabama in Huntsville. Working with Dr. Sokolik, Yun Hee published a paper last summer, which title is “Toward Developing a Climatology of Fire Emissions in Central Asia”.
In Yun Hee’s spare time, she enjoys cooking and spending time with his family and is expecting their second baby in December.
Giovanni Liguori -
Giovanni Liguori is a 4th year graduate student in EAS. He received his B.S. in Environmental Sciences, summa cum laude, from University of Naples “Parthenope” in Italy. While at Georgia Tech, he has been awarded the Domenica Rea D'Onofrio Fellowship and written 8 peer-reviewed publications that can be viewed on his webpage at www.oceanography.eas.gatech.edu/gianni/pubblications/
His scientific interest is oceanography and climate dynamics from interannual to decadal timescales. His current project focuses on the mechanisms responsible for the observed Pacific decadal variability, which impact long-term transitions in marine ecosystems and influence the statistics of weather including ocean and atmosphere extremes such as strong droughts, hurricanes and marine heatwaves. Specifically, combining observations and model outputs, he is studying how tropical and extra-tropical Pacific climate modes interact to produce decadal variability.
In addition to his principal research topic, the Pacific decadal climate variability, Giovanni recently broadened his research horizon by involving himself in a project aimed to study the impact of climate change on Peruvian glaciers. He gained firsthand experience by attending a workshop in Lima, Peru, and visited the Andean glacier of Artesonraju, hiking up to an altitude of about 18,000 feet. The project was broadcasted by a Peruvian news channel.
In his spare time, Giovanni enjoys cooking and hosting events for his friends, playing soccer, racquetball, traveling, and hiking.
Shannon Valley -
Shannon Valley is a 3rd year PhD student in EAS. Her line of research is paleoclimate/paleoceanography which involves reconstructing past ocean circulation using geochemical proxies in order to understand the ocean’s role in abrupt climate change. Recently she presented the poster "Timing of Deglacial AMOC Variability from a High-resolution Seawater Cadmium Reconstruction" at the International Conference on Paleoceanography.
Shannon received a BA in Political Science and International Studies (2007) from Northwestern University and an MS in EAS awarded Summer 2016 under the advisement of Dr. Jean Lynch-Stieglitz. She has worked for five years in NASA’s Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs in Washington, DC and was awarded the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal in 2014 for communicating NASA science (including Earth science) on Capitol Hill. During her time in DC, she also spent six months working in the West Wing, for the Domestic Policy Council in the Executive Office of the President. In 2015 Shannon was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She is currently the 2016-2017 University Relations Chair for Georgia Tech’s Black Graduate Student Association.
Her interests lie at the intersections of science and society. She spends a lot of time thinking about how scientific understanding of Earth systems can support those who are least equipped to handle changes to our climate and how our political and economic systems may help or hinder those efforts. In her spare time, Shannon enjoys traveling, yoga, hiking, and plane spotting.
Zachary Meeks -
Zachary Meeks is a 2nd year Ph.D. student researching Space Plasma Physics, under the direction of Dr. Sven Simon. His undergraduate degree is a B.S. in Physics (Astrophysics) from Georgia Tech. While in undergrad he published “Is J Enough? Comparison of Gravitational Waves Emitted Along the Total Angular Momentum Direction with Other Preferred Orientations” (2012) and “Efficient Asymptotic Frame Selection for Binary Black Hole Spacetimes using Asymptotic Radiation” (2011). As a graduate student he has published “A Comprehensive Analysis of Ion Cyclotron Waves in the Equatorial Magnetosphere of Saturn” (2016).
Zach is the Planetary Science Rep for GEAS (the graduate student organization for the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) and in his spare time he enjoys playing baseball, dealing blackjack, scuba diving with sharks, and woodworking.
Sebastian Ortega -
Sebastian Ortega started his graduate degree in Fall 2011. His line of research is focuses on Tropical Meteorology with Dr. Peter Webster. Specifically, he studies the South Asia Monsoon, and is interested both in its intra-seasonal and intra-annual variability. Within the research group, they study closely what happens in the upper troposphere as well as in the lower troposphere, and try to understand how both might interact. They have recently submitted a paper to the Journal of Climate, where they show that quasi-biweekly oscillation over the monsoon regions occur simultaneously with quasi-biweekly oscillations of the monsoon anticyclone.
Sebastian is a Civil Engineer from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Medellin. He says that his Colombian university also has a very good Geophysics School, focusing mostly in Hydrology, this is where he became interested in Earth Sciences. In his senior year of undergrad, he worked in Physical Limnology and studied how rivers can affect the thermal stratification of reservoirs. He is also very interested in Physics and Dynamical systems. Sebastian did his Ph.D. minor in Physics and always tries to incorporate what he’s learned here into research. In his spare time, Sebastian enjoys playing guitar, rock climbing, and reading.
Jia He -
Jia He is a 5th year Ph.D. candidate who received her B.S. in Atmospheric Sciences from Nanjing University in Nanjing, China. She is currently being advised by Dr. Robert Black with whom she co-published an article with entitled "Characterizing Arctic Spring Onset" which can be found in the Journal of Climate (2015). She has been working on identifying and characterizing rapid spring onset events and associated atmospheric dynamical processes in the Arctic. In her spare time, Jia enjoys working out at the gym and reading fiction novels.
Emily Christ -
Emily Christ is a 5th year graduate student whose line of research entails applyingweather forecast data to problems in agriculture. She earned herBachelor and Master of Science in Engineering, both from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Emily worked as an environmental engineering consultant prior to relocating to Atlanta with her husband, Joey. Currently she is a licensed Professional Engineer in both Alabama and Georgia.
Emily has one publication in the Journal of Cotton Science which was released in November 2015 titled ‘Using Precipitation Forecasts to Irrigate Cotton’. It explores the possibility of using weather forecasts as irrigation planning aids. Her research has been supported by Cotton, Inc. and she’s had the privilege to work with faculty and staff at the University of Georgia, UGA’s Stripling Irrigation Research Park, North Carolina State University, Auburn University, the University of Arkansas, and Mississippi State University while pursuing her degree.
She recently submitted a second paper to the Agronomy Journal that uses cotton canopy temperature forecasts to predict heat stress in cotton. In her spare time, she enjoys volunteering at the Peachtree City Treasures retail store for Wellspring Living. Wellspring Living helps domestic sex trafficking victims and the ‘at risk’ develop the courage to move forward and the confidence to succeed. Profits from the retail stores help support the ministry. Emily also enjoys serving at Peachtree City First Baptist Church, working out at Pure Barre and gardening.