Dr. Sophie Nowicki is an Empire Innovation Professor in the
Department of Geology and RENEW Faculty. Her research focusses on the
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, their connections to the Earth’s
climate system and their impact on sea level. Her work is aligned with
the RENEW Climate Change and Socioeconomic Impacts focus areas.Through
applied mathematics, remote sensing observations and numerical
modeling, her work spans the spectrum of local processes, such as
understanding the physics of ice sheet grounding lines, or the impact of
bedrock topography on ice dynamics, to that of large-scale continental
ice sheet models and their use in projections of sea level change. As
sea level projections from ice sheet models require knowledge of
atmospheric and oceanic conditions that drive ice sheet evolution, Dr.
Nowicki is also interested in how to improve climate models in the polar
regions, as well as the use of multiple models for projections.Prior
to joining UB, Dr. Nowicki was a Research Scientist and Deputy Chief
for the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory (Code 615) at NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. While at NASA Goddard, Sophie was a
science team member for Operation IceBridge, and co-lead the SeaRISE
(Sea-Level Response to Ice Sheet Evolution), an international effort
that investigated the sensitivity of the Greenland and Antarctic ice
sheets to external environmental forcings. She led many competed efforts
such as an effort to couple ice sheet models to the two Goddard climate
models (i.e., GEOS-5 and ModelE), and an effort that investigated the
feedbacks, processes and impacts of contemporary changes in the Arctic
using satellite observations, ice sheet and climate models.Dr.
Nowicki is a member of the NASA Sea Level Change Team (N-SLCT), a member
of the SEARCH Land Ice Action Team (LIAT), an executive committee
member for the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise phase 2
(IMBIE2), a member of the Community Earth System Model (CESM) Scientific
Steering Committee (SSC) and co-leads the Ice Sheet Model
Intercomparison Project for CMIP6 (ISMIP6). She is the Division Head for
Ice Sheets for the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences
(IACS) and a member of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Sea
Level Change and Coastal Impacts Chand Challenge. She was invited to be a
lead author on the IPCC 6th Assessment Report Chapter on “Ocean,
cryosphere, and sea level change”.Dr. Nowicki holds a Ph.D. in
Theoretical Glaciology from University College London (UK), an MSc in
Remote Sensing and Image Processing and a bachelor degree in Geophysics
from The University of Edinburgh (UK). Over her time as a scientist, Dr.
Nowicki has received numerous awards including that of NASA Cryospheric
Sciences Most Valuable Player, awards for Outstanding Publications and
Scientific Achievements. She is most proud of her mentoring award (the
Robert Goddard Honor Award for Mentoring) which recognizes not only her
work with postdocs and young scientists, but also the amazing work that
they did.