Dr. Yue Li (https://geog.ucla.edu/person/yue-li/) in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is seeking 1-2 talented and self-motivated Ph.D. students to join the lab in Fall 2025 with financial support. Our lab focuses on the physical environment’s interaction with human society under the changing climate system. Research topics in our lab include tropical terrestrial ecosystems, ecohydrology, wildfires, climate extremes, Earth system models, natural climate solutions, and land use/land cover change. After successfully enrolling in the Ph.D. program at UCLA Geography, you will be able to address scientific questions such as:

1. How do terrestrial ecosystems respond to global climate change and human-driven land use and exert climate feedback by changing land surface carbon, water, and energy fluxes?
2. How does climate change fuel extreme events such as heatwaves and wildfires, and how do these compound extremes increase societal risks and threaten public health?
3. To what extent and which aspects can we predict the Earth system from decadal to century-long time scale? How do we combine Earth system observations and models to build the knowledge that enables us to reduce climate risk and propose nature-based solutions?

I am especially interested in candidates with strong quantitative and programming skills who come from a background in the broad field of geoscience, including but not limited to Geography, Environmental Science, Ecology, Earth System Science, Atmospheric and Climate Science. Candidates with a social science background keen on applying quantitative approaches are also welcome to contact Dr. Li (yli [at] geog [dot] ucla [dot] edu).