Each quarter, the Center for Health and Environment: Education and Research spotlights a faculty member active in research in health and the environment. This installment features Ifeanyichukwu C. Nduka, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow with the Persad Aero-Climate Lab in the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin.
His research focuses on the interactions between climate and air pollution and its implications for human health and the environment. He joined the Jackson School in early 2023 and has actively participated in research and mentoring activities.
About Nduka
Ifeanyichukwu Nduka, Ph.D.
Nduka received his Ph.D. in geography and resource management from The Chinese University of Hong with a specialization in regional climate modeling. During his Ph.D., his research focused on the occurrence, intensity and mechanisms driving hot-polluted events in Southern China. Before that, he taught physical geography and climate science courses in Nigeria.
He also worked as an environmental analyst in a Nigerian startup. He holds a master’s degree in geography (specializing in urban climatology) and a Bachelor of Science in geography and meteorology from different Nigerian federal universities.
Active Research
Nduka currently works with a team of researchers on the Southeast Texas Urban Integrated Field Lab, one of four urban integrated field laboratories awarded in fall 2022 by the Biological and Environmental Research Program in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The project, led by Paola Passalacqua in UT’s Cockerell School of Engineering, aims to provide a quantitative understanding of projected climate change impacts and improve the practice of resilience science and community resilience through new and generalizable theories of change validated across Southeast Texas that will inform other regions.
He is part of the climate theme led by Geeta Persad, and his role in the project is to downscale and bias-correct selected global climate models. The ultrahigh resolution climate datasets produced will be integrated into air quality and hydrological models that quantitatively explore the effects of currently projected climate shifts. The downscaled and bias-corrected climate data and the results from the model runs will be combined with a set of sensitivity scenarios through a bottom-up approach using a decision-scaling method to explore the implications of these datasets on the overall well-being of the region’s residents.
Quarterly Question
If animals could talk, which would be the rudest?
Nduka: “Cats. I love them, but they always seem to do whatever they want and will act like you are there to serve them and shouldn’t bother them when they don’t need you.”