Meet Our Team
Our History: As part of a National Science Foundation grant, MIT developed software to display climate research data on a sphere for use in the classroom. They furthered development through a grant from Environment Solutions Initiative at MIT. Through these projects, we built a network of researchers, professors, and K12 teachers and enjoyed participation from 22 universities in 6 countries and 26 K12 schools. The projects also received letters of support from the following institutions: NASA • NOAA • Lorenz Center of MIT, • Princeton University.
William S. Horn
Ph.D.
Bill has a Ph.D. in Business and more than 3 decades of experience in information and knowledge management. Bill was a key member of the original NSF grant team that produced the software and educational network upon which Climate Globe was built. As President of Climate Globe, Bill is leading the development of this knowledge management platform and service.
Lodovica C. Illari
Ph.D.
Lodovica is a meteorologist who teaches large-scale dynamics and synoptic meteorology to graduate and undergraduate students. She is responsible for the Synoptic Laboratory, and her research interests include synoptic meteorology, severe weather, and atmospheric blocking. She is also involved in developing innovative teaching methods and outreach to the public and schools.
John C. Marshall
Ph.D.
John is an oceanographer interested in climate and the general circulation of the atmosphere and oceans, which he studies through developing mathematical and numerical models of key processes. His research has focused on problems of ocean circulation and coupled climate dynamics involving interactions between motions on different scales, using theory, laboratory experiments, observations, and new innovative approaches to global ocean modeling pioneered by his group at MIT. Current research interests include ocean convection and subduction, stirring and mixing in the ocean, eddy dynamics and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the role of the ocean in climate, climate dynamics, and aquaplanet. He joined the faculty in 1991.
Glenn R. Flierl
Ph.D.
Glenn is an oceanographer concerned with the theory of geophysical vortices and jets. His interests include modeling the physics, chemistry, and biology of strongly nonlinear ocean eddies and meandering jets, such as the Gulf Stream, which meander around their average paths with wave-like features having many different scales and periods, with resulting nonlinearities playing a significant role in the dynamics. He uses various analytical and numerical models to analyze the dynamics of features, such as vortices in vertically and horizontally sheared flows and the interactions between waves and vortices, and makes comparisons to recent observational studies. He is researching the growth of unstable perturbations on the Gulf Stream into finite-amplitude meanders and the way in which waves and eddies form in the region where the current detaches from the coast. Flierl is also investigating the physical and biological dynamics of the Georges Bank region. The tides, large-scale currents and jets, instability waves, and transient motions induced as offshore eddies impinge upon the continental shelf transport and mix the biological populations and may also, by upwelling nutrients or transporting material offshore, affect the growth and survival of plankton and fish. Other interests include the theory of isolated nonlinear eddies with application to Gulf Stream rings, Jupiter's Red Spot, and vortices in the solar nebula, biological patchiness and its role in ecosystem dynamics, and Hamiltonian dynamics of geophysical flows. With a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard (1975), Professor Flierl joined the faculty in 1976.
Dr. Tamara Shapiro Ledley
STEM education consultant
Dr. Tamara Shapiro Ledley is a STEM education consultant, an En-ROADS Climate Ambassador, an Adjunct Professor at Bentley University, and Secretary of the Education Section of AAAS. She was a 2017 Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow and served as a senior scientist and chair of the Center for STEM Teaching and Learning at TERC. She received her PhD from MIT in atmospheric and climate science and BS from the University of Maryland in astronomy. She led a research program in Earth system science and climate change at Rice University before joining TERC where she led the development of the award winning Earth Exploration Toolbook and EarthLabs projects. She co-founded and chaired the CLEAN Network and led the development of the award winning Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) Collection of rigorously reviewed climate and energy educational resources. She is the 2013 American Geophysical Union's Excellence in Geophysical Education Awardee. She served as President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP). She currently serves on the CLEAN Network Leadership Board, the Board of Advisors of the Museum of Science Boston, and the Board of Directors of both the Blue Hill Observatory and Science Center, and Subject To Climate.