Tirtha Banerjee, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
The Henry Samueli School of Engineering, Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB) 3084,
University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-2700, USA
tirthab@uci.edu
(949) 824-9230
Academic Profile:
Experience:
- Associate Professor, July 2023 – present, University of California, Irvine, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, CA, USA.
- Assistant Professor, July 2019 – June 2023, University of California, Irvine, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, CA, USA.
- Postdoctoral Fellow, February 2017 – June, 2019, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA.
- Postdoctoral Research Associate, September 2015 – January 2017, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) (Alpine Campus), Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Atmospheric Environmental Research (IMK-IFU), Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, Germany.
Education:
- Ph.D., July 2011 – August 2015, Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University, NC, USA. Adviser: Prof. Gabriel Katul. Full Dissertation in pdf: Turbulence in Natural Environments.
- Bachelor in Civil Engineering, 2007-2011, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India.
Honors and Awards:
- Visiting Fellowship for external academics, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Surrey, UK, 2024-2025.
- Elected Vice-President of the ICCLAS Coupled Land-Atmosphere Systems Commission of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS), 2023 – present.
- NSF CAREER Award, 2022.
- Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2018, Los Alamos National Laboratory.
- Top peer reviewer recognition by Publons – among top 1% reviewers in the assorted category, 2018.
- Chick Keller Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2017, Center of Space and Earth Sciences, Los Alamos National Laboratory.
- LANL Spot award for ‘high quality work under tight deadlines, added or emergency assignments in addition to regular duties’, 2017, Los Alamos National Laboratory.
- Certificate of outstanding contribution in reviewing from Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Elsevier.
- Sentinel of Science Award from Publons as one of the top 10 percent of researchers contributing to the peer review of the field of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 2016.
- Certificate in Nonlinear and Complex Systems, Duke University, 2015.
- Jadavpur University Medal for Excellence in Environmental Engineering, 2011.
- DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) WISE (Working Internship in Science and Engineering) Fellowship, 2010.
- National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI) award for scientific writing, 2008.
- National Merit Scholarship, India, 2005.
Editorial Roles
- Editor: Agricultural and Forest Meteorology (Elsevier, Dec 2023 – present)
- Associate Editor: Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology (AMS, 2023 – present)
- Associate Editor: Earth Sciences and Environment (Springer, 2017 – present)
- Editorial Board Member, Scientific Reports (Nature, August 2022 – present)
- Editorial Board Member: Agricultural and Forest Meteorology (Elsevier, July 2019 – Dec 2023)
- Guest Editor, Special issue on Advances in wildland fire-vegetation-atmosphere interactions, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology (2022 – 2023);
- Guest Editor: Special issue on `Turbulent Flows’ in Scientific Reports (Nature, 2022-2024)
Invited Lectures
2024
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UC Irvine, February 2024
- Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UCLA. January 2024
2023
- Interdisciplinary Centre for Water Research & Centre for Earth Science, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India. December, 2023
- NASA STV Meeting, Pasadena. November 2023
- Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UC Davis. November 2023
- Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, UCLA. October 2023
2022
- UCI Henry Samueli School of Engineering, Dean’s Leadership Council meeting, November 2022.
- University of California – Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR). Program Council Meeting (Virtual), November 2022.
- Conservation Biology Institute, Oregon (Virtual).
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, UC Santa Barbara, April 2022.
- ISEB Double Takes seminar series, UC Irvine, March, 2022.
2021
- Bridging spatial scales research workshop, Leverhulme Centre of wildfires, environment and society, London, UK, November, 2021 (virtual).
- Data Science Initiative workshop at UCI, November 2021.
- RS Fire – Remote Sensing and Wildland Fire Symposium, November, 2021.
- Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California, September, 2021.
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, UC San Diego, May 2021.
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, UC Irvine, May 2021.
- Department of Geography, UC Santa Barbara, April 2021.
- Environmental Systems Seminar, UC Merced, March 2021.
- CA Natural Resources Agency Seminar, January 2021.
2020
- CA Fire Science Seminar Series, UC Berkeley, October, 2020.
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, UC Riverside, April, 2020.
- Department of Earth System Science, UC Irvine, CA. January, 2020.
2019
- American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, Session on Boundary Layer Processes and Turbulence, San Francisco, CA. December, 2019.
- Pacific Southwest Research Station, US Forest Service, Riverside, CA. October, 2019.
2018
- College of Natural Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA. January, 2019.
- Department of Meteorology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA. November, 2018
2016
- Can a spectral theory explain the bulk properties of turbulent boundary layers? Geophysical Fluid Dynamics seminar, Department of Mathematics, Free University, Berlin, Germany, July, 2016.
2015
- Surface layer turbulence and canopy turbulence, Alpine Summer School on Land Atmosphere Interactions, course XXIII, Valsavarenche, Valle d’Aosta (Italy), June, 2015.
2014
- Turbulence in complex natural environments, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B), Mumbai, India, October, 2014.
Academic Service:
- Invited contributor, NSF/UCAR Greenhouse Gas Source Attribution Workshop, informing activities of the Greenhouse Gas Monitoring & Measurement Interagency Working Group (GHG IWG), which is co-led by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Climate Policy Office (CPO), and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).
- Science Advisory Panel Member, California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Taskforce (2021-present).
- Member of American Meteorological Society (AMS) STAC Committee on Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 2019 – present;
- Representative of UCI, Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI), 2020, present;
- Membership: American Physical Society (APS), American Geophysical Union (AGU), American Meteorological Society (AMS), European Geosciences Union (EGU).
- Participant, NSF Wildfire and the Biosphere Innovation Lab, 2021.
Review works:
- Reviewer for several NSF proposals.
- Reviewer for the following journals (95+ reviews): Advances in Water Resources, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Atmosphere, Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, Boundary Layer Meteorology, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Earth Interactions, Experiments in Fluids, Forests, Geophysical Research Letters, Hydrological Processes, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, Journal of Climate, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Journal of Geophysical research – Atmospheres, Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, Journal of Hydrometeorology, Physics of Fluids, Water, Water Resources Research.
Session Organizer:
- Organizer of iFireNet summer school at UC Irvine, July 19-21, 2022.
- Co-convener of session on Boundary Layer Processes and Turbulence, American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, San Francisco, USA. Dec 2023.
- Organizer of session on Advances in Wildland Fire-Atmosphere Interactions, American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, San Francisco, USA. Dec 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023.
- Organizer of special session (15 speakers) at 8th International Fire Ecology and Management Congress, Understanding the Use of Fire Disturbance in Ecosystem Process Modeling and Forest Change Predictions, Tucson, AZ, USA. Nov 2019.