The Lorenz-Houghton Postdoctoral Fellowship
Part of the Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), supporting exceptional early-career scientists with interests in the broad range of disciplines represented in the department.
Fellows are expected to pursue independent research, but are also encouraged to collaborate with one or more faculty members in the department. Interested applicants should contact prospective faculty hosts whose primary affiliation is in EAPS. Applicants working in climate science are eligible for the Lorenz-Houghton Fellowship.
Current and Past Lorenz-Houghton Fellows:
Now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, Wanying Kang’s research focuses on the atmospheric dynamics on Earth and on other planetary bodies. During her PhD, she explored the dynamic teleconnection between the tropical Madden-Julian Oscillation and the breaking of the polar vortex, which provides implications for extreme weather in a future warmer climate. Meanwhile, she investigated the climate on high obliquity aquaplanets (a type of planet whose rotation axes point toward the host star) and made predictions that these planets would be generally warmer, regardless of the existence of ice—which, together with other dynamic reasons, leads to a stratosphere that is orders of magnitude more moist. These findings may have important implications for habitability.
Janni Yuval’s research during his PhD focused on improving human understanding of the large scale circulation in the atmosphere, focusing on storm tracks. More recently, he is interested in integrating machine learning and causal inference methods into climate science. One such example is using machine learning to improve convection parametrization schemes. Janni believes that a machine learning convection scheme has the potential to reduce precipitation and temperature uncertainties in a global warming scenario.
