People

Dr. Danielle Touma is a Research Assistant Professor at the UT Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin. Danielle received her BS and MS in Civil Engineering at NC State University and worked for two years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She then went on to pursue her PhD at Stanford University in Earth System Science with Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh. She did her first postdoc with Dr. Samantha Stevenson at UC Santa Barbara, and then continued her second postdoc as an ASP Postdoctoral Fellow working with Drs. Clara Deser and Jim Hurrell at NCAR and CSU.

Danielle studies the impact of climate variability and human activity on the characteristics of extreme climate events, specifically extreme fire weather and extreme precipitation. She uses observational datasets and large ensemble Earth system model simulations to quantify changes and underlying uncertainties of extreme climate events and compounding events under a warming climate. She also works with ecologists and anthropologists to understand the impacts of extreme climate events on local to regional scales and how communities adapt to and mitigate their effects.

Tanner Johnson is a PhD student at The University of Texas - Austin. Originally from Hayward, Wisconsin, Tanner completed his BS in Geosciences at the University of Arizona where he researched post-fire debris flows and post-fire runoff with Dr. Luke McGuire. At the University of Arizona, Tanner won "Best Undergraduate Talk" for his work on modeling post-fire debris flows under climate change scenarios (he gave the same talk at the UTIG discussion hour). During his PhD, Tanner is working with Dr. Danielle Touma and Dr. Joel Johnson on post-fire hydraulic hazards in a warming climate, by looking at climate extremes using a variety of methods.

Fletcher Hozven is a first-year PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin. Fletcher is from Long Island, New York and attended UC Santa Barbara, where he studied Environmental Studies and Statistics & Data Science. There, he completed a senior thesis under Dr. Samantha Stevenson and PhD candidate Cali Pfleger using large ensemble climate models to investigate how droughts end under a changing climate in the Colorado River Basin. At UT, Fletcher is co-advised by Drs. Danielle Touma and Geeta Persad. He aims to continue studying hydroclimate extremes, with a growing focus on how satellite and observational data can be used to better evaluate climate model projections and how atmospheric rivers and wildfires influence drought recovery.

Julia Miller is a PhD candidate at ETH Zurich and SLF Davos in Switzerland, advised by Drs. Manuela Brunner (primary) and Danielle Touma (secondary). She works on understanding pre- and post-conditions of wildfire extremes and their drivers in Europe. In her work she uses observation and climate model data to disentangle compounding climate extreme events such as drivers of wildfires and post-fire flooding.