Dr. Nathaniel Chaney

Biography

Prior to joining Duke, Nathaniel Chaney was a postdoctoral research associate in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program at Princeton University, where he held a dual appointment as a visiting research scientist at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. He obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Atmospheric Sciences and Applied Mathematics. He completed his Ph.D. in Hydrology from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. His research focuses on harnessing existing large datasets of global environmental data to enhance the understanding of terrestrial water cycles. Chaney's work emphasizes quantifying and uncovering the role of multi-scale spatial organization on land and its impact on the Earth system's models. His overarching research themes include improving the representation of land heterogeneity in Earth system models, utilizing environmental data to characterize spatial features on land, and quantifying the sensitivity of the hydrologic cycle to spatial heterogeneity. He actively seeks motivated Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers for his research group.

Research Interests

Courses