
Anna Michalak joined Carnegie in 2011 from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan. She was named Director of the Department of Global Ecology in 2020. Her research focuses on characterizing complexity and quantifying uncertainty in environmental systems to improve our understanding of these systems and our ability to forecast their variability. She is looking at a variety of interactions including atmospheric greenhouse gas emission and sequestration estimation, water quality monitoring and contaminant source identification, and use of remote sensing data for Earth system characterization.
The common theme of her research is to develop and apply spatiotemporal statistical data methods for optimizing the use of limited in situ and remote sensing environmental data. She is also interested in the environmental policy, economic and legal impact, and applicability of environmental research.
Michalak received her bachelors from the University of Guelph, Canada, in Environmental Engineering. She received both her M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University in Civil and Environmental Engineering. She conducted her postdoctoral work at the Earth System Research Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder Colorado. Learn more at http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/michalaklab/