Winnie Chu

Assistant Professor

I was born in Hong Kong. My academic journey began in 6th grade when I joined a summer exchange program in England, during which I realized that studying science could be fun and it's not just about rote learning. At age 13, I convinced my parent to let me return to the U.K, where I later attended University College London to study Geophysics to combine my love for physics and earth sciences. At UCL, I worked on the early development of CryoSAT with Seymour Laxon, who encouraged me to pursue research in Polar Science. This led to my move to America to pursue a Ph.D. in Earth & Environmental Sciences at Columbia University under the guidance of Robin Bell. My dissertation focused on using airborne ice-penetrating radar sounding to characterize Greenland hydrology. During my Ph.D., I spent a summer interning at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Radar Science Division to work with Dusty Schroeder and Helene Seroussi. I later worked with Dusty at Stanford University as a postdoctoral researcher. My experience at JPL shaped my interest in combining radar sounding and ice-sheet modeling. Since then, my research continues to focus on developing ways to push the boundaries on what geophysics and numerical methods together can tell us about the ice sheets. Since 2020, I have been a faculty member in the School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences as the head of the Glacier Geophysics Group.


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Renée Clavette

Master Student

I was born and raised in Maine, and the rich outdoors experiences I had growing up fueled my interests and curiosity related to the natural world. Through school, I gravitated toward science and math classes leading me to obtain my Bachelor's degree in Earth and Climate Sciences at the University of Maine, where I was introduced to the field of glaciology. My undergraduate research primarily focused on quantifying the heterogeneity of microstructural ice properties, an important, yet sometimes overlooked, piece in ice dynamics. My interest in glaciological topics was (and still is) broad, and so I began my Master's degree in the Fall of 2020 at Georgia Tech investigating englacial and subglacial hydrology at Store Glacier using ground-based autonomous radar data. The exposure to glacier geophysics has shown me its great potential for answering many of the questions we have about the cryosphere and I hope to develop these skills and apply them to new problems in the future.


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Dante Angelo Tarzona

Ph.D student

I am from Houston, Texas, but I am originally from the Philippines. I got my Bachelor of Science in Earth Sciences at Dickinson College, PA. Throughout my undergraduate experience, I realized a passion for applying geophysical methods to observe subsurface structures. As an aspiring geophysical glaciologist at Georgia Institute of Technology, I aim to further improve the understanding of the impacts of climate change in polar regions by observing subglacial structures using geophysical tools. Currently, I am analyzing archival airborne penetrating radar data in Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica and comparing it to modern airborne penetrating radar data to observe for changes throughout the ice shelf. My desire for pursuing a PhD in this field is not only driven by my natural curiosity and passion, but also my interest in helping different communities understand societally relevant problems such as climate change through geophysics.


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Undergraduate Researchers