Michelle S. Zhang

Michelle Zhang is a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering, investigating how land–atmosphere interactions shape the evolution of weather and climate between storms. Her research focuses on the thermodynamic processes that govern moist convection, using remote sensing to identify the surface and atmospheric drivers of convective instability. As a MathWorks Fellow, Michelle will continue her work by implementing a suite of MATLAB-based workflows for data processing, visualization, and algorithm development to understand the land surface’s influence on atmospheric heat and moisture, ultimately leading to a better understanding of the next precipitation event. She is also developing an open-source MATLAB toolbox to compute convective available potential energy and simulate parcel ascent using observations, filling a critical gap in earth and atmospheric research infrastructure. By uniting physical theory with reproducible, observation-driven analysis, Michelle’s work could enable an observational benchmark that informs models for weather forecasting, climate predictions, and provides broader access to advanced diagnostic tools across Earth system science.