Department welcomes new faculty member Christine Chiu

Christine Chiu joined CSU Atmospheric Science faculty this month as an Associate Professor.

Christine received her B.S. and M.S. in Atmospheric Physics at the National Central University, Taiwan, and completed her Ph.D. in 2003 from the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University. Prior to joining CSU, she was an Associate Professor at the Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, United Kingdom; a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland–Baltimore County; and an Associated Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Christine’s primary research interests lie in remote sensing, radiative transfer, and cloud-aerosol-precipitation-radiation interactions. She has worked extensively on retrievals of cloud optical and microphysical properties that are the prime determinant of the energy budget, but are poorly predicted by climate models. The main problem in retrieving cloud properties is that clouds are complicated 3D objects that evolve fast. Christine has approached this problem using both passive radiometers and active radar/lidar beams, and is working toward blending observational elements, numerical simulation and model evaluation. This new approach allows us to investigate 3D cloud distributions and their radiative impact, to quantify aerosol impacts on precipitation, and to provide constraints for precipitation formation processes.