Linyin Cheng will be awarded the Natural Hazards Focus Group Award for Graduate Research. This award recognizes a promising young scientist engaged in studies of natural hazards and risks and is given in recognition of outstanding contributions achieved during their Ph.D. (or highest equivalent terminal degree) research. She will be formally presented with the award at the 2015 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, to be held 14–18 December in San Francisco, Calif.
Linyin Cheng received her Ph.D. in hydrology and water resources from the University of California, Irvine (2014), and an M.Sc. in ice dynamics from Clarkson University (2011). Her doctoral research, advised by Dr. Amir AghaKouchak, focused on developing statistical frameworks for spatial-temporal nonstationary extreme value analysis. In 2013, she received the National Center for Atmospheric Research Graduate Student Visitor Program Award and an American Geophysical Union Outstanding Student Paper Award. After her graduation, she received the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) postdoctoral fellowship (2014–2015) to work with Professor Balaji Rajagopalan at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and at the Physical Sciences Division (PSD) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL). Currently, she is an associate research scientist at PSD, ESRL, NOAA, working with Dr. Martin Hoerling and Dr. Judith Perlwitz. Linyin’s research interests include statistical analysis of climate and meteorological extreme events, spatial-temporal modeling of nonstationary processes, and statistical uncertainty analysis.