University of Maryland, College Park

Homepage: http://enst.umd.edu/home/

Dr. Akash Koppa’s lab at the Department of Environmental Science and Technology at the University of Maryland, College Park is seeking a motivated PhD student to start in Fall 2025. The student will work on answering fundamental research questions related to how drylands form.

Project Description: A rapidly warming climate is expected to accelerate this dryland expansion. Consequently, not only will societies face permanent water insecurity, but plant and animal biodiversity will be under threat. Despite these consequences, very little is known about the physical mechanisms which cause irreversible long-term drying of humid regions. An unexplored mechanistic pathway is how land–atmosphere feedbacks in local and upwind areas modulate the expansion and formation of drylands. Interested candidates are referred to Koppa et al. (2024), Science for preliminary evidence of the role land–atmosphere feedbacks in dryland expansion.

Role Description: The student will work on a) coupling a Lagrangian atmospheric transport model with Earth system model simulations, b) developing a novel mathematical framework decompose the source of drying into its and and ocean components, and c) using the aforementioned tools to develop a novel theory of dryland formation from a land–climate feedback perspective.

Preferred Qualifications: The successful candidate should a) have a Bachelors and/Masters degree in a related field (e.g. environmental science, climate science, Earth science, civil engineering), b) have experience in developing algorithms for exploratory data analysis in a programming language of their choice, c) have prior experience in numerical modeling.

Application: Interested students are requested to send the following materials to Dr. Akash Koppa (akash.koppa@epfl.ch and/or akash.koppa90@gmail.com) with ‘PhD position on land–climate interactions in drylands’ as the subject matter:

1. A motivation letter (less than 600 words) addressing the following questions: a) why do you want to do a PhD?, b) why are you interested in this particular research topic?, and c) how will you leverage your education and experiences in approaching the research problem?
2. A detailed curriculum vitae with unofficial transcripts.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Informal interviews will be conducted between November 15–30, 2024. The successful candidate will have to apply to the graduate program in the Department Environmental Science & Technology at the University of Maryland, College Park before December 15th 2024.