People

Current Members

Dr. Alex O. Gonzalez (he/him/his)

Assistant Professor, Principal Investigator

Alex grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA and always had a love for math and science; he was particularly interested in the science behind natural disasters. His interest in meteorology picked up when he was a teenager after seeing the movie, Twister. He studied meteorology and mathematics at Penn State University, where he graduated with a B.S. in 2008. He attended graduate school at Colorado State University, graduating with an M.S. in 2011 and Ph.D. in 2015 in Atmospheric Science. After graduate school, he was a postdoc for 2.5 years with a joint appointment between UCLA and NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab before he was an Assistant Professor of Meteorology at Iowa State University from 2018–2022. He joined WHOI's Physical Oceanography Department as an Assistant Scientist in the Summer of 2022. His broad research interests include:

Fouzia Fahrin

Ph.D. Candidate

Fouzia was born and grew up in Bangladesh, and she is passionate about Tropical Meteorology. Fouzia finished her undergraduate degree in Mathematics from University of Dhaka and her master’s degree from Georgia Southern University. Fouzia started her Ph.D. in Meteorology in Fall 2021 at Iowa State University. Her research focuses on understanding the interactions between the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and tropical waves on subseasonal and seasonal timescales. Fouzia loves mountains ranges, and she enjoys exploring interesting atmospheric phenomena and understanding the science behind them.

Contact: ffahrin@iastate.edu

Chengfei He

WHOI Postdoctoral Scholar

I'm a climate modeler, data scientist, and keyboard enthusiast with a passion for advancing our comprehension of climate change.

I received my Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the Ohio State University and my Bachelor’s and Master’s in Meteorology from the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology.

My research falls broadly under two fundamental questions:

What are the causes of past and future changes in oceanic and atmospheric circulation and climate variability?
How can we quantitatively interpret these changes and their impacts?

I use an interdisciplinary research approach that combines a hierarchy of climate models, isotope-enabled modeling, statistical and machine learning techniques, and observations/paleoclimate proxies, aiming toward a better understanding of the physical principles that govern climate dynamics in the past and future.

Contact: chengfei.he@whoi.edu

Website: https://yefee.github.io/

Chelone Laws

NSF SOARS Undergraduate Researcher

Chelone was born and raised in Harlem, New York City, and is a current undergraduate student and Posse Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She’s majoring in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and is pursuing a certificate in Professional Japanese Communications. As part of the SOARS program this summer, she’s researching the effects of increasing vertical resolution on the representation of the ITCZ and low clouds.

Contact: klaws@wisc.edu

Past Members

Indrani Ganguly, Ph.D.

Marissa Osterloh (Now a Graduate Student at Iowa State University)

Travis Enzensperger (Now at the Cooperative Institute of Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations, CIWRO)

Jared Schadler (Now at NWS Aviation Weather Center in Kansas City, MO)

Anna Duhachek (Now a Graduate Student at Iowa State University)

Cassidy Cook (Now a Graduate Student at Western Governors University)

Katherine Hanson (Physical Science and AP Chemistry Teacher at Urbandale High School in Urbandale, Iowa)

Kevin Greene (Now a Senior Program Coordinator at Frontier Energy)

James Larson (Now a Graduate Student at Colorado State University)

Allysa Dallmann (Recent M.S. Graduate of the University of Texas at Austin)

Ashley Heath (Now a Scientific Programmer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland)

Matthew Statz

Melissa Piper (Now a Ph.D. Candidate at The University at Albany, State University of New York)

Sara Foernssler (Now an On-Air Meteorologist in Grand Rapids, Michigan)