Postdocs

Moala is interested in using analytical chemistry to identify how PCB concentrations near the Neponset River, a Superfund site, are transporting to the atmosphere. Moreover, she wishes to use modeling to see if PCB fluxes surrounding the Neponset and similar sites are significant to global transport of PCBs. Moala joins the Selin group as part of the second cohort of the MIT School of Engineering Postdoctoral Fellowship Program for Engineering Excellence. Moala graduated from the University of Iowa with a M.Sc. and PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering, where she characterized polychlorinated biphenyl surface emissions and room air concentrations in schools. She has a B.Sc. in Natural Resources from Delaware State University. In her leisure time she likes to watch reality tv, lift weights, and spend time with her family.

Shahine is interested in developing simple and interpretable statistical machine learning methodologies to address computational challenges raised by climate models and speed up the exploration of possible future climates. At MIT, he joined the ‘Bringing Computation to the Climate Challenge’ flagship project to work on the development of simplified climate models called "climate emulators" that can be used to rapidly explore climate scenarios. He received his PhD from the University of Oxford, where he worked on probabilistic machine learning for climate science, focusing on kernel-based learners. He holds an MSc in Machine Learning from École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay and an MEng in Applied Mathematics from CentraleSupélec. He enjoys photography, cooking, and design. For more details see his webpage.

Paolo develops and runs numerical models to understand how the atmosphere works across different scales, from global-scale dynamics to local aspects of weather, climate and air quality. He received his PhD at the University of Notre Dame, where he studied boundary layer turbulence to couple Numerical Weather Prediction models and Large Eddy Simulations. He has worked in different research institutions and contributed to the development of atmospheric models to support policy decisions and provide solutions for current environmental challenges, including air quality, wind energy deployment and climate change. At MIT, he joined the ‘Bringing computation to the climate challenge’ flagship project with the goal of contributing to the development of a digital twin of the Earth and making climate predictions more practical for communities and stakeholders. Outside the lab, Paolo is an enthusiastic soccer player and enjoys playing guitar.

Zehui employs advanced numerical models, integrating emissions estimates, geographical information, and multi-source observational data to understand and explore air pollution and biosphere-atmosphere interactions. At MIT, she plans to quantitatively assess the impact of forestry management and land competition on climate change and air quality. She graduated from Peking University with a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Physics and Environment, studying the impacts of nitrogen emissions and land use changes on regional air quality. She has visited the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) as a guest research assistant at the Pollution Management Research Group. Outside of work, Zehui enjoys hip-hop dancing, hiking, running, and painting.

Björn uses machine learning (ML) to tackle climate change, little-by-little. In particular, he is concerned about the computational complexity of climate models. As a solution, he is developing hybrid ML-physics models as fast approximations, or 'emulators', of climate models. He has experience working in ML and climate at IBM, John Deere, and NASA FDL. He has earned his PhD with Dava Newman at MIT in ML for Earth System Modeling, his M.Sc. with Jon How from MIT in robust deep reinforcement learning and his B.Sc. from Technical University of Munich in engineering science. He also windsurfs poorly, switches hobbies every year, and likes learning new languages. For more details see his webpage.

Anthony is interested in investigating how the terrestrial biosphere, nitrogen cycle and climate interact with air quality, and by extension their implications on public policy and resource management. At MIT, he focuses on evaluating the environmental impacts of potential increasing alternative fuel usage in the global shipping industry. He graduated from Boston University with a Ph.D. in Earth and Environment, studying ozone deposition, and how land system changes can affect air quality. He also holds a B.Sc. in Physics from Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he was a research assistant working on atmosphere-biosphere interactions. Outside of work, he enjoys studying history and culture, travelling, and every mountain sports.