Yang Song

Dr. Song is an assistant professor in the Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences and the faculty member of the National Science Foundation-funded " Ecosystem Genomics" graduate training program (BRIDGES). Song's research focuses on Biospheric-Earth System Modeling and aims to advance our understanding and predictive power of the role of vegetation, microbial communities, and humans -the biotic components of the Earth system - in terrestrial-atmospheric interactions. To achieve this goal, she is developing and employing a variety of state-of-the-art tools to address pressing issues of the world, including (1) Develop multi-scale datasets, scaling solutions, and process-based models across disciplinary boundaries to improve Earth System Models (ESMs). (2) Apply improved ESMs to simulate and forecast biospheric system behaviors in response to climate forcings, and (3) Seek both scientific insights and practical strategies of fundamental relevance to societal well-being, including agriculture production, bioenergy feedstock, carbon sequestration, and water quantity and quality. In details, her current research mainly focuses on three themes (1) Small bugs, Big roles: Linking ecosystem genomics to Earth system modeling for improving microbial functional representation in the ESMs. (2) Diverse plants, distinctive impacts: Linking advances in plant physiology and crop engineering to Earth system modeling for improving parameterization of plants and manipulated crop varieties in ESMs. (3) Human-centric Practices, Climate-smart Agriculture: Developing model assessment tools to identify climate-smart agriculture practices.

Degrees

• PHD in Atmospheric Science, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign