Congratulations to Stella Heflin, Recipient of the College of Science-HAS Excellence in Undergraduate Research Award!
May 4, 2023
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Our warmed congratulations go to Stella Heflin, awardee for the College of Science-HAS Excellence in Undergraduate Research Award!
Stella's research has been supervised by Dr. Mimi Hughes of NOAA's Physical Science Laboratory and HAS Professor Ali Behrangi.
The focus of her research is the impact of climate change on precipitation patterns of the Western U.S., such as atmospheric rivers, monsoons, and orographic precipitation, areas of specific interest primarily due to the interactions these phenomena have with the unique and personally-felt complexities of water resources in this part of the world.
Stella stated that "an improved understanding of precipitation phenomena in the Western U.S. can also potentially be translated to other arid regions with less ground-truth data and infrastructure, so, in this way, I view this work as globally impactful in addressing the climate crisis. To this end, I wrote my Honors College thesis on the ability of various precipitation datasets to accurately detect monsoonal precipitation. I am interested in continuing to answer science questions surrounding these phenomena and the impact climate change may have on them using regional climate models, historical data records (i.e. gauges etc.), and reanalysis and satellite based precipitation products."
This summer Stella will be returning briefly to the NOAA Physics Science Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, to finish a first author paper regarding a case study of precipitation microphysics during the SPLASH field campaign, and in the fall, she will be attending the University of Washington to pursue a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences with funding from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. She will graduate from UArizona with both a degree in Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences and in Applied Physics, along with a minor in Mathematics.
Congratulations, Stella!
Contacts
Ali Behrangi