AOS Graduate Student Profile
Research Interests
I work with advisors Geoff Vallis of AOS and Clancy Rowley of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE). We are interested in applying the mathematical tools from control theory to the problem of reducing uncertainty in parameterizations of climate models. We are addressing several different aspects of this problem by: constraining unknown parameters with historical observations of the real climate system, building low-dimensional models of uncertainty, and deriving low-dimensional approximations to climate dynamics.
General Interests
- Data assimilation in climate models using non-linear filtering (Bayesian) algorithms
- Uncertainty propagation and reduction in models
- State and parameter estimation for high dimensional nonlinear systems
- Low-order models for reducing computational expense of parameterizations in climate simulations
- Multiscale modeling framework
Other Activities at Princeton
I am the co-founder of the Public Issue Index which is all about changing the way people think about major societal issues by reintroducing data to the discourse.
I am an alumnus of the Princeton Energy and Climate Scholars (PECS), a group of graduate students interested in learning about the broader scientific, economic, and political impacts of our research. For more information visit the PECS webpage.
I have contributed to an open-source control systems package for Python. Still a work in progress but it has a lot of potential for control theorists, especially if access to Matlab is limited or expensive. Check out python-control.
Teaching
- Assistant in instruction for ENV 201, Fundamentals of Environmental Studies, Fall 2010
- Assistant in instruction for MAE 433, Automatic Control Systems, Spring 2010
- Instructor of algebra, Princeton Prison Teaching Initiaitve at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women, Spring 2010
I also enjoy running, backpacking, and long-distance sailing on the Great Lakes.
Publications
Padilla, L., Vallis, G.K. and Rowley, C.W. Probabilistic estimates of transient climate sensitivity subject to uncertainty in forcing and natural variability. Journal of Climate, 24, 5521-5537, 2011.
Padilla, L. and C.W. Rowley. An adaptive-covariance-rank algorithm for the unscented Kalman filter. Proc. 49th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 1324-1329, 2010.