About me

Hi, I’m Lijing, currently a Postdoc Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working in the Watershed Function SFA. I will be joining the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Connecticut as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2024.

I graduated from the Department of Geological Sciences at Stanford University in March 2023, advised by Professor Jef Caers. I also hold a Ph.D. minor in Computer Science. At Stanford, I was affiliated with Stanford Center of Earth Resource Forecasting and Stanford Data Science Scholar Program. My ultimate career goal is to provide decision solutions for water resources under climate change using advanced modeling, machine learning, and decision science methods. Previous to the graduate school, I obtained my Bachelor of Science degree in Space Physics and Applied Mathematics from Peking University.

I have devoted my career to developing state-of-art data integration and model calibration methods specifically for water resource management. I first entered this field as an undergraduate working on spatial data integration using geostatistics in air pollution predictions. Geostatistics opened a new quantitative world for me to formulate spatial models for the earth systems. During my Ph.D., I worked with Professor Jef Caers at Stanford to advance geostatistics, Bayesian inference, and stochastic optimization methods to quantify the uncertainty of earth resources, with a primary interest in water resources. From aquifer systems to mountainous floodplains, my research development sheds light on how water exchanges spatiotemporally, what the driving factors are, and provides informed predictions for earth resource management.

I am passionate about teaching data science methods to geoscience audiences and the broader scientific community, with real earth science studies (i.e. natural hazards, climate change, earth resources) and interactive python notebooks! We are developing a new textbook on Data Science for the Geosciences, which will be on the market in late 2023! Stay tuned!

Outside of research, I enjoy hiking, backpacking, photography, piano-playing, and I love all PLANTS.