Marie McGraw

Research Scientist I, Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, Colorado State University

I am an atmospheric scientist studying weather and climate variability, extreme weather, and climate change. Most of my current research at CIRA is focused on the intersection of machine learning and artificial intelligence, and tropical meteorology. Before joining CIRA, I worked on a large variety of research projects covering many aspects of weather and climate variability, including extreme sea ice loss, jet stream dynamics, and causal discovery and climate variability.

I earned my B.S. in mechanical and ocean engineering from MIT. As an undergraduate, I enjoyed my classes in fluid dynamics and took a variety of fluid dynamics classes in mechanical, ocean, and aerospace engineering as well as earth sciences. After taking an atmospheric and ocean dynamics class, I discovered that the research questions that were the most exciting to me were in earth sciences and geophysical fluid dynamics. I wound up at Colorado State for my M.S. and Ph.D. in atmospheric science. I liked working at CSU so much that I came back after a postdoc at the University of Washington.

While pursuing my Ph.D., I realized that I liked statistics and data science almost as much as atmospheric science, and I’ve been able to fuse both topics in my own research career. This came as a surprise to me, as I struggled quite a bit with programming as an undergraduate, and many days felt like I would never be able to figure it out. I like to remind myself of how much my skills, confidence, and attitudes have changed, and I try to bring this energy to my lectures, presentations, and mentoring.

When I’m not running machine learning models, looking at satellite images of tropical cyclones, or otherwise occupied with work, you can usually find me enjoying myself outdoors, or thinking about food–growing it, cooking it, and eating it.