Meet the Climate Fellows

Climate Fellows will bring their rich research insights to the UVA Environmental Institute's several cross-disciplinary research projects and affiliated research endeavors each year. This cohort of postdoctoral researchers from a wide range of climate-related research fields will work with selected faculty mentors to produce impactful research that connects findings to real-time climate solutions.

Current Climate Fellows

Aashutosh Aryal

Aryal earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Virginia. His research aims to understand and explain the impacts of hydrometeorological extreme events on hydrology and water resources, especially compound flooding in coastal and riverine systems. He integrates remote sensing datasets, climate projections, and hydrodynamic modeling to improve the prediction of compound flood hazards in data-scarce regions. While at the Institute, Aryal will deploy his research experience to create more innovative coastal urban compound flood prediction and management methods with a goal to accurately estimate actionable lead time for infrastructure adaptation and resilience planning. “I hope my postdoctoral work can be extended to other coastal regions confronting growing threats from multi-driver flood hazards under climate change,” Aryal stated. He will work with Kathleen Schiro and Julianne Quinn.

Mary Asare-Addo

Asare-Addo was inspired to apply for EI's Climate Fellows program during her Ph.D. research work at Europa-Universität Flensburg in Germany using geospatial science to assess the potential of renewable energy resources. In addition to her geospatial science expertise, she will be working to bridge much-needed but often overlooked community engagement dimensions of Energy Transitions projects, alongside Eric Loth, Christine Mahoney, and Andres Clarens. Asare-Addo's contributions to the Climate Fellows program are important to her mission "to help accelerate global decarbonization of energy systems towards achieving the SDG 7 targets and fulfilling the Paris Agreement."

Laura Buckley

As a Climate Fellows program postdoc, Buckley will work on expanding her research to consider how policies and regulations shape housing development can drive more sustainable and healthy materials, designs, and locations. She received her Ph.D. in Environmental Health from Boston University. “I’m looking forward to applying my background in analyzing the broad impacts of climate change and mitigation efforts to housing—a new area for me,” Buckley said. She will work alongside Jeana Ripple, Andrew Hayashi, Moira O’Neill, and Andres Clarens.

Vanessa Ines Cedeno Mieles

Cedeno uses online controlled networked temporal social science experiments to study social behavior to explore phenomena, such as collective identity. Her work has quantified the formation of collective identity. She joins the Institute to work with faculty mentors Majid Shafiee-Jood and Lisa Colosi Peterson. Cedeno was awarded her Ph.D. in computer science from Virginia Tech.

Aleksandra (Sasha) Durova

Durova is bringing her urban planning and social science experience from MIT to further her research interests in spatial planning and urban design, resilience, climate adaptation, and equity, through the Arctic Cities project. With direct supervision from Matthew Jull and Howard Epstein, Durova will channel her experience studying the historical legacies and processes of uneven development amidst climate change-related challenges, during her fellowship years. Having previously contributed her expertise as a transportation planner at a design institution and the World Bank internationally, Durova says she is particularly excited about the Climate Fellows program's support for research on frontline communities, including those in the Arctic, and the opportunity for interdisciplinary work within the Arctic Research Center. “The Climate Fellows program provides an excellent opportunity to be part of academic collaborations and join a team of scholars studying cities and issues related to sustainability across different countries,” she said.

Read more about the Arctic Cities project.

Valentina Ekimova

Ekimova joins the Climate Fellows from Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), located in Moscow, Russia. She will join the Arctic Cities team with faculty mentors Howie Epstein and Matthew Jull. Ekimova has significant research demonstrating that in Arctic regions hydrate destabilization may occur as a result of salt migration and she looks forward to real field observations. She loves to travel and learn about new cultures.

Ziqi Gao

Gao received her Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She joins the Institute to work with Sally Pusede, Kimberly Fields and Shan Yu on ways to predict community-level air pollutant concentrations. Her previous research mainly focused on assessing the impact of regulations, emissions, meteorology, and large-scale climate patterns on air quality using multiple numerical computational models.

Tim Higgins

Higgins graduated with a Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from the University of Colorado – Boulder. As a Climate Fellows Postdoc, Higgins’ work will involve applying his expertise towards merging text data with numerical weather data to create AI interpretations of atmospheric states with human language. He will be applying Vision Language Models, AI Agents, and Diffusion towards addressing this task and other related research. Higgins will be mentored by Chirag Agarwal and Antonios Mamalakis. “The interdisciplinary nature of the program is very attractive because it allows me to connect my work and ideas with those of others in adjacent fields,” Higgins shared.

Nasif Hossain

Hossain was awarded his Ph.D. in Global Health from the School of Tropical Medicine and Global Health at Nagasaki University, Japan. He will be working with faculty mentor Josh Colston, Samarth Swarup and Margaret Kosek to quantify the impacts of climate change on health outcomes through advanced statistical modeling. Hossain said he is excited to join the Institute as "the program offers an interdisciplinary environment for collaboration with experts in climate science, health, and statistical modeling."

Truc-Ly Le-Huynh

Ly will work with faculty mentors Bob Davis, Pam DeGuzman and Wendy Novicoff to examine climate-related diseases and health disparities in Virginia, with a focus on racial, ethnic, and gender differences in responses to climate factors. Ly received her Ph.D. from Nagasaki University in Japan and said, "The Institute’s focus on translating research into practical solutions and policy recommendations resonates with my goal of making a tangible impact on public health and environmental practices. This alignment ensures that my work will contribute meaningfully to addressing critical issues faced by communities affected by climate change."

Shahryar Ramezani

Ramezani, who received his Ph.D. from Rice University, will work with faculty mentors Liheng Cai and Sen Zhang on, among other things, ways to optimize 3D printed materials as a mold for catalysts that are vital for carbon capture technologies. "The climate fellow program promotes an environment of collaboration along different fields," he shared, "with the main goal of enhancing techniques necessary for controlling our environmental footprint."

Shivam Singh

Singh will work with faculty mentors Antonios Mamalakis and Tom Hartvigsen to decipher the complexities of climate extremes, including floods, droughts, and heatwaves through the utilization of cutting-edge Deep Learning algorithms. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Indore. Singh said he was drawn to the Institute's fellows program "because of its strong reputation for interdisciplinary collaboration and cutting-edge research in climate science."

Mehdi Teghizadeh

Teghizadeh received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Virginia. His research focuses on developing and applying advanced deep learning methods, such as graph neural networks and physics-informed models, to enhance the simulation speed and accuracy of complex physical systems. He will work with Negin Alemazkoor, Ferdinando Fioretto, and Somayeh Asadi. Teghizadeh chose the Climate Fellows Program because it addresses real-world environmental challenges from interdisciplinary perspectives. “By collaborating with utility providers, I aim to ensure my research incorporates real-world constraints, ultimately providing actionable information that helps regional and community decision-makers address climate-related concerns.”

Previous Climate Fellows

Sergio Armando Barbosa Casas

Casas worked with UVA faculty mentors Jonathan Goodall and Lawrence Band. He joined the Environmental Institute from Brigham Young University. Sergio grew his already recognized expertise in Groundwater Storage changes using groundwater modeling in parts of Africa as an integral part of EI's Regional Hydroclimatic Changes project. In 2022, he received the CSHS Bill Stolte Student Paper Award in the Canadian Water Resources Association National Conference in Canmore, Canada. Casas' research contributions grow the understanding of changes in mean hydroclimate, and also changes in seasonality, variability, and extreme events and the implications for those changes at the community level. Casas is a postdoctoral research associate in Computational Hydrology at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Lab, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Swatah Borkotoky

Borkotoky joined the Climate Fellows program with years of studies in the fields of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He acquired a Ph.D. from Cornell University, where he had been researching the signals of extreme precipitation and atmospheric rivers occurring over the western United States. As a Climate Fellow, he brought expertise in reconstructing records of tree-ring chronologies, examining the multi-decadal fluctuations of hydro-climate into his work with Kevin Grise and Kathleen Schiro. “I am excited that the Climate Fellows program offers me the opportunity and the desired flexibility to develop my own research project with the guidance of my faculty mentor,” he said. Borkotoky took a position as a research associate at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University.

Dong Chen

Chen joined the Environmental Institute from Michigan State University and worked with UVA Faculty Mentors Arsalan Heydarian and Brad Campbell. "I am eager to engage in high-impact research topics that have substantial real-world implications," Chen said. Chen's work has been published in recognized high-impact journals including the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems and Computers and Electronics in Agriculture. Chen took an assistant professor position at the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Mississippi State University.

Daniel Rau

Rau graduated with a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2022. As a Climate Fellow in 2024, he worked with Dr. Liheng Cai. Rau previously worked on projects to develop new materials for 3D printing that are significantly softer and more flexible than the materials currently available. "Being able to 3D print complex structures from these very soft materials has a range of exciting applications (that we are currently working hard on)," Rau shared. Rau took a position as assistant professor, Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wyoming.

Logan Stundal

Stundal received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 2022 and worked with David Leblang on issues concerning climate- and conflict-induced migration. Current projects include collaborative work with UVA's Biocomplexity Institute on migration in response to the war in Ukraine, as well as papers investigating monthly migration through the Darien Gap and across the US southern border in response to climate pressures and food insecurity. Stundal joined the Department of Homeland Security in a research role.

Fangfang Yao

Yao joined the Environmental Institute's Climate Fellows cohort from the University of Colorado Boulder. At UVA, Yao works with Larry Band and Jon Goodall in the Environmental Sciences and Civil & Environmental Engineering Departments. Yao's research includes the discovery that more than half of the world's largest lakes have declined over the past three decades, underscoring the importance of water management solutions. Yao's work was most recently featured in Science magazine. Yao took a position of assistant professor, School of Geosciences, University of South Florida

Yulu Zhang

Zhang completed her Ph.D. at the University of Virginia and continued her work with Sen Zhang as an Environmental Institute Fellow. She was co-mentored by Liheng Cai. She investigates catalytic performance of carbonized metal materials for electrochemical applications at the UVA Sustainable Energy Nanomaterials Lab. Her project resulted in relevant research findings about carbonization of 3-D printed hydrogels into metal carbide scaffolds. Zhang is a visiting assistant professor at Gettysburg College (Pennsylvania).

Devin Zuckerman

Zuckerman received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia’s Religious Studies Department and joins the Climate Fellows program as a post-doctoral researcher at UVA’s Contemplative Sciences Center. She is working with Michael Sheehy and Matthew Seibert to design transdisciplinary research projects that study human cultural and contemplative practices of sensing and sense-making in the natural world. Her research is especially interested in how these kinds of attentional practices produce transformative experiences of ecological belonging, and motivate efforts toward collaborative flourishing with more-than-human others, and environmental justice. Zuckerman is an assistant professor of Religious Studies in the Religious Studies Department at UVA.