Selected Student Profiles Natasha Ballis
What opportunities has the Centre of Excellence offered you?
Degree: PhD
I attended this year’s winter school on tropical meteorology. It was a great opportunity to broaden my knowledge beyond my field of research, and to meet others from the Centre of Excellence.
Year: 1st year Institution: U.Melb Supervisor: Dr Murray Peel (U.Melb), A/Prof Rory Nathan (U.Melb), Dr Benjamin Henley (U.Melb) and Prof David Karoly (U.Melb)
What are your hopes/plans for after you graduate? I endeavour to continue bridging science and engineering, academia and industry.
Who in ARCCSS are you working with? Two of my PhD supervisors are ARCCSS investigators: Prof David Karoly (Chief Investigator) and Dr Ben Henley (Associate Investigator).
Tell us a little about your background, how did you get here? Upon being awarded degrees in engineering (civil) and science (atmosphere and ocean sciences) from the University of Melbourne, I was employed as an engineering consultant in the water industry. In this role, I undertook the analysis, modelling, planning and design of water supply systems for a number of Victorian and interstate water authorities and undertook a secondment at a water authority in regional Victoria. Keen to incorporate my science background with my engineering experience in the water sector, and also keen to balance industry experience with academic research, I’ve undertaken a PhD candidature spanning both fields and with direct application to industry.
Tell us a little about your project. My PhD research spans the University of Melbourne’s Department of Infrastructure Engineering and School of Earth Sciences, and forms part of an Australian Research Council linkage project, the Victorian Drought Risk Inference Project, between the University of Melbourne, Monash University, Melbourne Water, The Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, and the Bureau of Meteorology. I intend to combine observed hydrologic records with paleoclimate archives to: improve our understanding of hydrologic variability in Victoria; build better-informed stochastic models for water supply systems; and more reliably assess the risk of severe drought and its associated risk to water supply systems.
Pearse Buchanan Degree: PhD Year: 3rd year Institution: UTAS Supervisor: Dr Richard Matear (CSIRO) and Prof Nathan Bindoff (UTAS)
Who in ARCCSS are you working with? Dr Richard Matear (CSIRO) and Prof Nathan Bindoff (UTAS)
Tell us a little about your background, how did you get here? Some my favourite childhood memories are snorkelling among the warm temperate reefs of Western Australia. These experiences nurtured my interest in the ocean, and after taking an oceanography course during my undergraduate studies, I was completely hooked. So I concentrated on biological oceanography, completing both a research project and an honours in the field, with two amazing supervisors. But I wanted to move past regional studies towards global patterns, as I enjoyed asking big questions about the climate. This led naturally to an interest in global biogeochemical cycles, which involve all pieces of the oceanography puzzle: physics, geochemistry, and biochemistry.
Tell us a little about your project. My research explores the complex relationship between oceanic biogeochemical cycles and the climate system. That is, how do ocean biogeochemical properties, such as the carbon and oxygen cycles, change in response to climate, and in turn how do these changes affect the climate? We have found that fundamental changes in ocean biogeochemistry are necessary to explain past changes in the climate. Now we seek to quantify how variations in the oxygen and nitrogen cycles have influenced climate change in the past.
What opportunities has the Centre of Excellence offered you? Climate modelling is terribly technical. The Centre of Excellence has supported my learning of numerous programming languages and has provided me with the opportunity to attend workshops.
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