In January 2014, I joined the faculty in the Department of Ecology at Montana State University.
Previously, I spent 2000-2005 at Duke University for my PhD, and then carried out post-doc positions at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (2006-2009), the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Snow, Forest and Landscape Research WSL (2009-2011), and the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et l’Environnement (2011-2013).
My research addresses the role of vegetation dynamics on earth system processes, i.e., carbon and nutrient cycling and climate feedbacks. I work with an ensemble of ecosystem models known as dynamic global vegetation models, or DGVMs, to explore hypotheses related to climate, disturbance, and land-cover change impacts on vegetation. DGVM models provide a useful approach to combine information from forest inventory, flux towers, and remote sensing, with ecological theory, to test predictions at multiple timescales in the past, present, and future.
I am engaged in several multi-model syntheses exercises (MsTMIP, TRENDY, WETCHIMP, LBA) and have contributed to the recent Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I “Chapter 6: Carbon and other biogeochemical cycles”.
Fellowships
2011-2012 – Chinese National Science Foundation Young Foreign Scholars Fellowship
2009-2011 – EU Marie Curie FP7 Incoming International Fellowship
2006-2008 – EU Marie Curie FP6 Incoming International Fellowship (declined)
2002-2005 – NASA Earth System Science Graduate Fellowship
2002-2003 – FK Weyerhaeuser Forest History Society Fellowship
Activities
Global Carbon Project, Carbon Atlas, TRENDY
IPCC 5th Assessment Report