Mathilde (she/her) is a DPhil student in the Climate Processes group supervised by Professor Philip Stier. Her research explores relationship between convective processes (e.g., storm updrafts) and the evolution and properties of clouds, including their impact on the large-scale climate.
I am driven by wanting to understand our world, and how it impacts our communities.
Presently, I'm interested in questions like "how and why will tropical clouds respond to warming?" And, "will that response accelerate or dampen warming?" Rather than rely on climate projections alone, we work to understand what processes control tropical clouds in the first place. A field with many challenges and unknowns.
Beyond the fundamental physics of climate change, I am interested in many components of our life-supporting and life-threatening Earth system.
I am particularly interested in climate extremes that impact communities, including droughts, floods, fire, and heat. For preparedness, understanding the physics of these extremes is not enough, forewarning and historical context are key. To that end, observations and machine and deep learning are important enablers of context-specific risk information and forecasts. I have worked on all of these topics in academia and industry, including in contexts where stakeholders have high vulnerability but limited resources.
I believe our best legacy is how we enable those around us to thrive.
I mention this because I feel strongly that it takes intention and effort to make workplaces in which all people can thrive. This is work I love doing. Some highlights have included setting up and running a mentoring scheme for climate science in Australia, and, here at Oxford, founding and running our (now thriving) social society in the sub-department.