JISAO is a NOAA sponsored joint institute that operates between the University of Washington and the NOAA Alaska Fishery Science Center (AFSC), the Marine Mammal Laboratory (MML), the NOAA Northwest Fishery Science Center (NWFSC), and the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL).

When seeking a postdoc appointment at JISAO, you are strongly encouraged to provide a letter of support from a research scientist at AFSC, JISAO, MML, NWFSC, or PMEL and/or a UW faculty member in a relevant department.

A list of potential mentors and their research interests can be found below. This list contains those interested in working with postdocs but is not inclusive; mentors at the local NOAA centers/laboratories or at the UW not on this list may be contacted as potential mentors.

Tom Ackerman, Atmospheric Sciences

Becky Alexander, Atmospheric Sciences

Chris Bretherton

My research group studies cloud formation and turbulence and improves how they are simulated in global climate and weather forecast models. Our research includes participating in field experiments and observational analyses (most recently the 2015 CSET and 2018 SOCRATES campaigns studying marine boundary layer clouds and their interaction with aerosols in the Northeast Pacific and Southern Oceans), three-dimensional modeling of fluid flow in and around fields of clouds, and understanding how clouds will respond to and feedback on climate change. My group is also exploring the application of machine learning to improved parameterizations of cloud processes and cumulus convection in climate models. I would be excited to mentor potential postdoctoral fellows in any of these areas, particularly in machine learning parameterization and applications of global cloud-resolving modeling.

Alberto Aliseda, Mechanical Engineering

James Anderson, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Kimberly Andrews, JISAO

Diego Arcas, NOAA

Virginia Armbrust, Oceanography

Edward Baker, JISAO

John Baross, Oceanography

Tim Bates, JISAO

Our research examines the effects of atmospheric particles on climate and air quality.  Most of our research is carried out on research vessels looking at both naturally produced and anthropogenic aerosols in the atmosphere http://saga.pmel.noaa.gov/data/.  Our current focus has been on ocean derived aerosols http://saga.pmel.noaa.gov/publications/pdfs/2012/bates_seasweep_2012JD017588.pdf although we are moving forward with measurements from unmanned aerial systems http://saga.pmel.noaa.gov/publications/pdfs/2013/amt-6-2115-2013.pdf.

David Battisti, Atmospheric Sciences

David Beauchamp, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Salmon experience a broad range of habitats and associated environmental-ecological conditions as they complete their life cycle through freshwater, estuarine, and marine systems. Salmon production is currently limited by a variety of factors that affect survival, especially during early marine periods which are believed to determine adult recruitment. The nature and magnitude of these effects are expected to change with changing climate, land and water use. Size-selective marine mortality is a prevalent feature in the dynamics of anadromous salmonid populations. We are interested in exploring how top-down and bottom-up processes vary among life stages to create critical periods that influence growth and size-selective survival to adulthood. We can address these topics through a combination of retrospective analyses of data and archival samples, direct field sampling, and modeling. Our ultimate goal is to develop mechanistically-based models that help diagnose existing limitations and predict responses by salmon and their associated food webs to climatic and anthropogenic changes. These questions are prevalent throughout the geographic range of Pacific salmon and steelhead, and opportunities exist to either focus on localized systems like Puget Sound or conduct comparative analyses and syntheses across multiple systems (e.g., California Current, Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, Inland Seas, etc.).

Cecilia Bitz, Atmospheric Sciences

I am interested in ice and climate interactions in the present, past, and future. My group mostly uses climate models, from simple reduced models to full-blown earth system models. I have also done a little field work in the Antarctic on the interactions of ice shelves, sea ice, and climate. I work on polar climates at both poles, and I often consider interactions with the global climate system. Please check out my web site if you think you might be interested in working in my group at http://www.atmos.uw.edu/~bitz and email me.

Nick Bond, JISAO

Trevor Branch, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

I focus on solving biological problems through data synthesis and mathematical models and work on a variety of research projects, including: assessing the global status and future directions of marine fisheries, testing hypotheses about how fisheries affect marine food webs using stock assessments, catches, and surveys, and detecting factors that influence patterns in fishery development; the human side of fisheries, including fishing behavior and fleet dynamics, especially as related to the effect of individual transferable quotas (“catch shares”) on the environment, target fisheries, discards, and quota utilization; research on large whales, especially blue whales but also minkes and humpbacks, which has led to papers on abundance estimation, changes in population size over time, maps of occurrence and the separation of subspecies; modeling herring in Prince William Sound, delving into explanations for their collapse and failure to recover; and the effects of ocean acidification on marine seafood; how overlooking opportunistic depletion can lead to extinction in multispecies systems.

My graduate students and postdocs are currently working on modeling herring in Prince William Sound, improving Bayesian convergence time for fisheries stock assessments, developing new methods for data-limited stock assessments, examining the effects of catch shares on fisheries and ecosystems, assessing the status of blue whales in the Pacific and estimating the frequency of black swan events in ecological data.

Chris Bretherton, Atmospheric Sciences

David Butterfield, JISAO

Brendan Carter, JISAO

Manuel Castellote, JISAO

Bonnie Chang, JISAO

Wei Cheng, JISAO

I am a physical oceanographer studying ocean-sea ice-atmosphere interaction on multiple scales ranging from multi-decadal to seasonal, and from global ocean to regional seas. The goal of my research is to understand how the ocean responds to surface forcing mechanisms, and in turn, regulates the atmospheric and sea-ice processes, and also the marine ecosystem. I use a suite of tools including earth system modeling, regional ocean biophysical models, in-situ data collected from the sea, and satellite remote sensing products. My research portfolio is diverse and includes the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), Arctic sea ice predictability, and marine ecosystem and fisheries response to environmental changes in the Eastern Bering Sea, to give a few examples. At NOAA/PMEL, I work within the EcoFOCI group (linking to the FOCI web page) where cross-disciplinary work is conducted.

Andy Chiodi, JISAO

Edward Cokelet, NOAA

Howard Conway, Earth and Space Sciences

Joyce Cooper, Mechanical Engineering

Meghan Cronin, NOAA

Eric D’Asaro, APL/Oceanography

John Delaney, Oceanography

Jody Deming, Oceanography

Allan Devol, Oceanography

Sarah Doherty, JISAO

Dale Durran, Atmospheric Sciences

Robert Embley, NOAA

Steven Emerson, Oceanography

I approach my research, teaching and advising with a “chemical perspective” of oceanography in which the distributions of chemical concentrations and isotope ratios are used to understand biogeochemical processes and the role of the ocean in the global fluxes of oxygen and carbon. As the science of oceanography becomes more interdisciplinary, it is important to understand how chemical tracers can be used to determine rates of physical and biological oceanographic processes that are not possible to constrain otherwise. My main research interests are in the utility of gases and their isotopes for constraining net biological fluxes of metabolites in the euphotic zone and mixing processes deeper in the thermocline and deep sea. Specifically, we are studying: (1) the utility of in situ oxygen sensors on moorings and Argo floats to determine the net biological oxygen production globally and (2) the use of N2 and noble gas and isotope ratios to constrain the nitrogen cycle of the ocean. We are interested in adding a postdoctoral fellow with interests in these analytical processes or in studying gas tracers in ocean global circulation models to help interpret our analytical work.

Timothy Essington, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

My lab focuses on food web interactions involving fish in marine, estuarine and freshwater habitats, and applications for sustainable fisheries. My lab conducts work in a wide range of marine ecosystems from high seas pelagic systems to the inland seas of Puget Sound. We look at links between fishery governance (e.g. rights-based fishing) and ecological conditions, and attempt to understand the potential conflicts between fisheries as they target species that occupy distinct positions in food webs. Work in my lab tends to be quantitative, involving modeling and statistical analysis of complex data sets. We conduct fieldwork and collect data, particularly in Puget Sound where we are working to understand the structure of the food web, how it varies in time and space and how it is impacted by climate change and other anthropogenic influences, such as hypoxia.

Richard Feely, NOAA/PMEL

My research interests lie in carbon cycling and ocean acidification in open-ocean and coastal regions, specifically concerning mechanisms controlling sources and sinks of anthropogenic CO₂ in the oceans, and impacts of CO₂ on marine ecosystems.

Carolyn Friedman, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Dargan Frierson, Atmospheric Sciences

I’m most interested in studying responses of the climate system to global warming, and fundamental aspects of the general circulation of the atmosphere and the ocean.  For potential JISAO postdocs, I would suggest projects involving a simplified coupled atmosphere-ocean model that we’ve been running.  It has idealized basins, simplified atmospheric physics, and runs quickly so many long simulations can be performed.  I’d be interested in using it to continue studying the role of ocean circulation on determining rainfall patterns in the tropics and extratropics, and in studying ocean heat uptake with global warming: its patterns and influence on large-scale hydrologic and dynamical responses to warming.

Qiang Fu, Atmospheric Sciences

Professor Fu’s research areas are in atmospheric radiation and cloud processes, atmospheric circulation changes associated with global warming and their impacts on clouds and water vapor and the feedback to the climate system,  the Brewer-Dobson circulation, tropical tropopause layer (TTL) and the temperature structure and changes in TTL, terrestrial aridity changes.

Vince Gallucci, Earth and Space Sciences

Daniel Grunbaum, Oceanography

Greg Hakim, Atmospheric Sciences

Many of the most important outstanding problems in Earth system science involve coupling between the atmosphere and the ocean over long timescales. Our research activity on this central theme involves two main foci: climate reconstruction using paleo-proxy data, and decadal predictions of climate variability. These problems are linked by the need to fuse information from models and observations, and by techniques used to exploit that information for understanding the evolution of the coupled system. We use ensemble approaches to these problems, and a hierarchy approach to test ideas from simple low-order models up to next-generation Earth-system models.

Dennis Hartmann, Atmospheric Sciences

Susan Hautala, Oceanography

Al Hermann, JISAO

Ray Hilborn, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Laura Hinkelman, JISAO

Dr. Hinkelman is a research scientist at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean of the University of Washington. Her research spans a range of applications of atmospheric radiative transfer. Much of her research to date has focused on the Earth’s energy budget, long-term trends in surface insolation, and the effect of clouds on atmospheric radiative transfer. Her current projects concentrate on practical application of satellite and ground-based irradiance data: evaluating the use of satellite radiative flux products in snowmelt models; examining the variability of surface insolation as a function of space, time, and cloud conditions for application to solar energy production; and evaluation of satellite radiation data products. Dr. Hinkelman has worked extensively with ground-based solar flux measurements, Monte Carlo radiative transfer, and a wide range of satellite data sets.

Robert Holzworth, Earth and Space Sciences

John Horne, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Robert Houze, Atmospheric Sciences

George Hunt, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Anitra Ingalls, Oceanography

My lab group examines the chemical signatures of microorganisms with the goal of learning about the feedbacks between the global cycles of carbon and nitrogen and climate in the past, present and future. We use the tools of mass spectrometry based metabolomics and proteomics and collaborate broadly with molecular biologists and paleoceanographers to study the metabolic capabilities of microorganisms and the chemical tracers they leave behind. We are also interested in how organic compounds mediate microbe-microbe interactions and microbe-environment interactions. With a mix of fieldwork and lab studies, we work in diverse environments across the globe.

Lyatt Jeagle, Atmospheric Sciences

Lyatt Jaeglé is interested in understanding the chemistry of the natural atmosphere and its perturbations by human activities. Her group uses global and regional models to analyze ground-based, ship, aircraft, and satellite observations of atmospheric composition. Current research projects are focused on understanding emissions, chemical transformation, and transport of gases and particles in the earth’s atmosphere.

Dan Jaffe, Atmospheric Sciences

My team does observations and analysis to understand global atmospheric chemistry, along with local and regional sources of air pollution. We have operated the Mt. Bachelor Observatory for the past 15 years to examine long-range transport of pollution from Asia to North America. Recently our focus has shifted to examine the impacts on air quality from large wildfires which have significantly increased in the Pacific Northwest. Our team uses a variety of tools including own chemical observations (e.g. O₃, NOx, VOCs, aerosols, Hg, etc), along with other data, such as meteorological data, satellite data, chemical transport models, statistical modeling, GIS, etc.

Gregory Johnson, NOAA

Gregory Johnson is an Oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and an Affiliate Professor at UW’s School of Oceanography. He works on large-scale ocean circulation, water masses, and their variability; ocean dynamics; ocean-atmosphere interactions; and the ocean’s roles in climate. He is active in global repeat hydrography programs both national and international (http://www.go-ship.org/) and leads a group at PMEL contributing to the Argo program (https://floats.pmel.noaa.gov/).

H. Paul Johnson, Oceanography

Richard Keil, Oceanography

Deborah Kelley, Oceanography

William Kessler, NOAA

Carol Ladd, NOAA

Craig Lee, APL/Oceanography

Evelyn Lessard, Oceanography

Marvin Lilley, Oceanography

Ron Lindsay, APL Polar Science Center

Jessica Lundquist, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Professor Jessica Lundquist and the Mountain Hydrology research group investigate meteorology, snow, ecological, and runoff processes in complex terrain.  Examples of past research and publications can be found here:  http://depts.washington.edu/mtnhydr/  We are currently working on projects involving the remote sensing of snow surface temperatures and snow depth, on the best practices in merging this information with modeling, and on forest management and forest-snow interactions and would welcome postdoctoral researchers with interests in any of these areas.

Parker MacCready, Oceanography

Our most recent project is to create a daily forecast model of ocean circulation and carbon chemistry focused on Ocean Acidification in the NE Pacific and Salish Sea.  This will be used by shellfish growers, among others, to try to mitigate the threat of corrosive waters.  A former JISAO postdoc, Dr. Samantha Siedlecki, is part of the team, and we would very much like to bring in another postdoc.

Cliff Mass, Atmospheric Sciences

Ryan McCabe, JISAO

Michael McPhaden, NOAA

I study large scale ocean-interactions, ocean dynamics, and the oceans role in climate. My primary focus is on the tropics, with emphasis on El Nino and the Southern Oscillation, the monsoons, tropical Atlantic climate variability and related phenomena. I specialize in the analysis and interpretation of satellite and in situ data, in the context of theory and dynamical models, to improve understanding of processes at work in the climate system and how they may be affected by anthropogenically forced climate change.

Marc Miller, Marine and Environmental Affairs

Christopher Moore, NOAA

Calvin Mordy, JISAO

Charles Nittrouer, Oceanography

Andrea Ogston, Oceanography

Ivonne Ortiz, JISAO

My work focuses on spatial approaches to ecosystem based fisheries management using a variety of models and statistical analysis: food web and ecosystem modeling centered on trophic interactions, climate-to-fish models that couple oceanography, lower trophic levels, fish and fisheries, as well as development of ecosystem indicators, and how they are impacted by climate and the environment -both in the past (hindcasts) and the near and long term future (seasonal and decadal forecasts). My interests follow three major routes: informing policy and management, integrated ecosystem studies, and science communication.  I collaborate closely with the Resource Ecology and Ecosystem Modeling group at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and have joint projects with other groups working on marine mammals,  essential fish habitat and innovative technologies. 

James Overland, NOAA

Julia Parrish, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Our lab focuses on how citizen science at scale can provide the data for both baseline and anomalous events within the coastal systems of the California Current and Alaska Current large marine ecosystems. We focus on marine birds as indicators of system health, and have a secondary focus on marine debris. See COASST for more information. Our program attempts to quantitatively describe anomalous events, and ascribe causality, both in service of helping communities, agencies and society make intelligent decisions about how to manage our natural resources.

Jerome Patoux, Atmospheric Sciences

Don Percival, APL

Ted Pietsch, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Andre Punt, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Paul Quay, Oceanography

Patricia Quinn, NOAA

Tom Quinn, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Joseph Resing, JISAO

Peter Rhines, Oceanography

Jeffrey Richey, Oceanography

Ignatius Rigor, APL

Stephen Riser, Oceanography

Gabrielle Rocap, Oceanography

I am interested in the ecology and evolution of marine microbes, including phytoplankton, bacteria and viruses.  We use genomic and proteomic approaches to connect organismal physiology with ecosystem function. A project of particular current interest is the community structure and functional roles of bacteria on sinking and suspended particles in the Eastern Tropical North Pacific Oxygen Deficient Zone. This is a collaborative project offering opportunities for field work and close interactions with colleagues applying chemical oceanographic and modeling perspectives to the same question.

Gerard Roe, Earth and Space Sciences

Julian Sachs, Oceanography

I am interested in understanding how the climate has varied on a range of time and space scales. Much of my lab’s recent work has been focused on the tropical Pacific over the last 10,000 years, with an emphasis on the last 2,000 years (the Late Holocene). We use molecular and isotopic measurements in sediment cores that we recover from lakes, swamps and lagoons on islands spanning the entire tropical Pacific Ocean. We work closely with climate theoreticians here at the University of Washington and elsewhere to understand the mechanisms underlying the climate changes we observe. Applicants with expertise in geochemistry, paleoclimatology and/or climate theory are encouraged to contact us to discuss possible postdoctoral research projects.

Casey Saenger, JISAO

Eric Salathe, NW Climate Center

I conduct research on regional climate change and climate change impacts, with a primary focus on the US Pacific Northwest and SE Asia. Specific projects include: regional climate modeling with WRF, extreme precipitation and flood risk, climate change impacts on Puget Sound.

Daniel Schindler, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Kenneth Sebens, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Yolande Serra, JISAO

Serra’s research focuses on improving understanding of the factors that contribute to convective initiation and organization over tropical and sub-tropical ocean and land areas, with a focus on the Western Hemisphere.  These projects have included the study of tropical easterly waves, low-level jets, upper-level troughs and topographically forced diurnal circulations, and their role in initiating and organizing convection over the tropical eastern Pacific, Central America, North American monsoon and Amazon regions.  Such studies contribute to improvements in our understanding of the factors that control rainfall in tropical and semi-arid climate zones, and in the representation of rainfall and its variability in regional and global models used for operational forecasts and climate projections.

Charles Simenstad, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

John Skalski, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Amy Snover, Climate Impacts Group

The Climate Impacts Group supports the development of climate resilience by advancing understanding and awareness of climate risks, and working closely with public and private entities to apply this information as they act to shape society’s future. We develop and deliver the fundamental scientific understanding, data, tools, and guidance necessary for managing the climate risks facing the people, communities, and ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest. Current areas of focus for the group include science in support of resilience to floods (due to sea level rise, changing streamflow and extreme precipitation), clean cool water for fish (projecting changes in wetlands and stream temperature), successful adaptation to a changing climate (frameworks for defining and evaluating success), tribal climate resilience (supporting the development of tribal capacity for vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning), equity in climate adaptation, and the theory and practice of linking scientific knowledge with practical action.

Rolf Sonnerup, JISAO

Philis Stabeno, NOAA

Kathleen Stafford, APL

Eric Steig, Earth and Space Sciences

Adam Summers, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Adrienne Sutton, PMEL

My research centers around the patterns of air-sea CO₂ exchange and ocean acidification in open ocean, coastal, and coral reef environments. Specifically, I am interested in using interdisciplinary approaches to explore how physical and biological mechanisms, such as the El Nino/Southern Oscillation and coral reef metabolism, drive variations in ocean carbon chemistry across time and space. These approaches include using autonomous instrumentation on buoys and other platforms to better understand natural variability and long-term trends in ocean carbon.

Abigail Swann, Atmospheric Sciences

With my research program I am developing a systematic understanding of where and how ecosystems modify the climate system. To do so, I use mathematical models and observations to explore ecosystem-climate interaction dynamics and address fundamental questions about the role of biology in the Earth system. My overall research goal is to quantify how interactions between the land and the atmosphere alter both climate and ecological systems. An underlying hypothesis guiding my work is that the biosphere modifies how the Earth system responds to change, and that the two systems’ interaction reveals emergent behavior not anticipated in either alone. I pose critical questions about ecology’s role in the Earth system’s functioning, a significant unknown factor in the Earth system’s response to change. My work takes the novel approach of investigating not only the impact of climate on biological systems, but also the impact of biology on climate.  I use numerical modeling of photosynthesis, ecosystem dynamics, carbon cycling, atmospheric dynamics and the interactions among them to outline and quantify the two-way interactions between ecosystems and climate. This includes the use of global general circulation models of the atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystem models, ecodemographic models representing size and age structure in addition to leaf level photosynthetic behavior, and simple box models of the carbon cycle. In addition to numerical models I utilize data from the site-level, the stand-level, regional networks and satellites.

LuAnne Thompson, Oceanography

The largest exchanges of heat between the ocean and the atmosphere occur in mid-latitude western boundary current extensions.  These heat exchanges are driven by ocean heat transport convergence, both in the mean and on interannual time-scales.  Investigation of the interaction of the ocean and atmosphere in regions of strong ocean currents has been hampered by biases in low-resolution ocean climate models and a lack of long-term ocean observations.  Records of satellite sea level, sea surface temperature, cloud cover, and surface fluxes of heat are now available for 20 years or more, affording new opportunities to investigate the interaction of the atmosphere and ocean on interannual time scales. By combining satellite and in situ observations with climate model output available from the Climate Model Intercomparison Project version 5 as well as new high-resolution couple ocean-atmosphere model simulations, we are investigating the role of the oceans in storing and transporting heat and fresh water, including where and when stored heat in the ocean is released back to the atmosphere.

Joel Thornton, Atmospheric Sciences

My research focuses on the chemistry of aerosols and clouds, its impact on air quality and climate, and how this chemistry is impacted by couplings between anthropogenic and natural emissions. We use a combination of in situ observations, laboratory process studies, and modeling to study how aerosol particles form and grow from transformations of biogenic hydrocarbons, how sea spray aerosols affect air quality in coastal regions and the cleansing ability of the marine boundary layer as a source for reactive halogens, and how oceanic shipping emissions affect maritime cloud microphysics and vertical development.

Vasily Titov, NOAA

Glen VanBlaricom, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Ed Waddington, Earth Space Sciences

J. Michael Wallace, Atmospheric Sciences

Muyin Wang, JISAO

My research interests are in the climate and climate change in the Arctic; possible connections of Arctic climate change with middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere; prediction of Arctic sea ice; climate variability in the North Pacific, and impact of climate change on the ecosystems. Climate model assessment (CMIP3 and CMIP5) is part of the work we have been doing in search for a better way to use these state-of-the-art models.

Mark Warner, Oceanography

Yong Wei, JISAO

Dr. Wei’s main expertise is hydrodynamics modeling and hazard assessment of long-wave including tsunamis and storm surge and waves, methods and theory of tsunami model forecast, tsunami/seismic source inversion, deterministic and probabilistic assessment of coastal flooding, geophysical data analysis, water wave mechanics, and tsunami loads and effects on structures. Dr. Wei has extensive experience in development of high-resolution tsunami inundation forecast models. He is also actively working on hydrodynamics modeling to differentiate paleo-deposits of tsunamis and storms. Over the past years, Dr. Wei has led the effort to develop probabilistic tsunami design zone maps for the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) standards. He is now a PI of several projects to investigate deterministic and probabilistic tsunami inundation for coastal infrastructures.

William Wilcock, Oceanography

Kevin Williams, APL/Oceanography

Dale Winebrenner, Earth and Space Sciences

Kevin Wood, JISAO

Rebecca Woodgate, APL/Oceanography

Graham Young, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Dongxiao Zhang, JISAO

Large scale ocean circulation and its role in climate and climate variability. Impacts of changing circulation on marine ecosystem and chemistry. Tropical oceanography and air-sea interaction. High latitude processes that link to Thermohaline Circulation.