Alex Chang has been selected as the winner of 2022 JSIP Best Presentation Award, for his project final presentation entitled "Apply Data Science to Support Ultra-high Resolution Climate Model Development Using Satellite Data”. The award certificate will be presented to Alex in a JIFRESSE event in the future.

Alex Chang is currently a second-year PhD student in UCLA's Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) Department. He grew up near Princeton, NJ and quickly got hooked into the atmospheric sciences after experiencing a wide variety of weather there (including 2 hurricanes) throughout his childhood. He then went to UC Berkeley and studied applied mathematics and data science there while also doing several climate-related research projects throughout his undergraduate career. Now, he is continuing to pursue that interest here at UCLA.

Alex's response upon receiving the award:

"This summer, I had the pleasure of working with JIFRESSE and JPL to develop a framework for regionally refined climate model evaluation with respect to precipitation simulations. The project was the first step towards tying my research to my eventual PhD dissertation, and it was incredibly rewarding to be able to not only conclude what I had found but also learn more about how climate models work in general. This research experience would not have been possible without my advisor (Rong Fu), my JPL mentor (Huikyo Lee), JIFRESSE, the Department of Energy, and much more. I look forward to using all of the skills I have learned throughout my research experiences towards my future research as a PhD student."