Simona Bordoni

Advanced Study Program Postdoc
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
Boulder, CO



I was born and raised in Rome, Italy, where I got a Masters degree in Physics at the University of Rome Tor Vergata in 1997. As part of my degree, I spent a few months in Grenoble France, at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility where I used X-ray diffraction methods to study material properties of epitaxially grown semiconductors (and where I met my future husband).

I discovered Atmospheric Sciences (my current passion and research interest) after I took a summer job for an Italian company involved in the sale and installation of meteorological instruments for operational and research applications. As part of my job, I maintained and upgraded the radio-sounding stations of the Italian National Weather Service, where weather balloons are launched up to four times a day. I was literally fascinated by the amount of information on the atmospheric state (temperature, humidity, winds) that a weather balloon can send back to the surface: at the time I did not know how to interpret this information, but I promised myself I would learn more: so I kept my job for a few more years and, when I moved to California with my husband, I decided to go back to school and complement my operational knowledge with a formal training in Atmospheric Sciences.

I started grad school at UCLA in Fall 2001 and got my PhD in Spring 2007. My dissertation research focused on monsoons, which I studied on different scales, from small to very large, and different methods, from satellite data to numerical models, under the guidance of two advisors, Prof. Bjorn Stevens (UCLA) and Prof. Tapio Schneider (Caltech). During my years as a grad student, I was also involved in two major field campaigns, the North American Monsoon Experiment (NAME) in Mexico and Rain In Cumulus over the Ocean (RICO) in the Caribbean, which were among the most instructive, exciting and unique experiences of my student life.

Following my graduate studies, I joined the Advanced Study Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in January 2008, and I am very excited to be part of such an outstanding postdoc program at one of top institutions for the atmospheric and earth system sciences. To date, my research still focuses on monsoons and aims at understanding fundamental dynamical mechanisms which are implicated in their existence, their location and different geographical features, and which might help understand how monsoons will change with changing climate. In the future, I want to continue working in this exciting field, and I hope I will be able to provide students the same excellent and inspiring mentorship I was so lucky to receive in these first few years of my career. More information about myself, my current research and publications can be found on my web page.

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