Dr. Francis Zwiers is director of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC) at the University of Victoria. His former roles include chief of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis and director of the Climate Research Division, both at Environment and Climate Change Canada. As a research scientist, his expertise is in the application of statistical methods to the analysis of observed and simulated climate variability and change. Dr.
Abigaïl is a Climate Data and Mapping Research Assistant at PCIC, where her work focuses on expanding PCIC’s downscaling capabilities to address requirements at even higher resolution than the downscaling products PCIC offers today. In the course of her studies, Abigail became interested in numerical modelling and data processing and their application to the field of climate science. She arrived in Victoria last spring for an internship at UVic, in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, where she worked on coastal convection modelling with Dr. Boualem Khouider.
Nina joined PCIC in September 2022 in a new role as the Indigenous Communities Climate Adaptation Coordinator. Prior to working with PCIC, she spent over 3 years working with First Nations across BC in marine and fisheries management, policy and research. Nina completed a BSc from the University of California Davis, where she focused on marine biology and inter-tidal ecosystems. After her bachelors she worked as a science educator for two years before completing her Masters in Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University.
Isabelle Lao is a Climate Data Analyst at PCIC interested in the applications of data science to understand the natural world. Isabelle joined PCIC in 2022 and holds a BSc from the University of British Columbia in Chemistry and Oceanography. In the past she has worked with meteorological data from the Vancouver Island Weather Station Network to understand the temporal and spatial variability of nocturnal warming events in the Greater Victoria Region.
Tom Kunkel is PCIC’s IT Specialist/Linus Administrator. Tom originated from West Africa, has lived in Spain, the UK, Germany, and Switzerland, and has spent much time in the Middle East. Now a proud Canadian citizen, Tom now lives in BC. He worked as a freelance consultant in design, development and architect roles in banking, logistics, oil exploration, customer support, manufacturing, and disaster recovery. Tom was an IBM PowerParallel SP and HACMP expert until he converted to Linux clusters.
Eric Yvorchuk is a Programmer/Analyst with the Computational Support Group at the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium. His role consists of assisting in the development and maintenance of PCIC’s climate analysis tools and participating in the multi-institutional collaborative “Data Analytics for Canadian Climate Services (DACCS)” project, funded by a Canada Foundation for Innovation Cyberinfrastructure grant.
Dr. Pei-Ling Wang has joined PCIC's Climate Analysis and Monitoring Theme as a Post Doctoral Researcher. Her work is focused on developing uncertainty estimates to accompany high-resolution climate data, integrating remote sensing data into PCIC’s climate maps, creation of high-resolution time-series maps of BC’s climate, characterizing climate extremes in BC, and developing data sets to drive hydrologic models.
Teresa joined PCIC in May 2021 and is the Administrative Assistant who provides administrative support to the Director, the Lead Planning and Operations and Administrative Coordinator to facilitate day-to-day operations. Prior to joining PCIC, Teresa worked for the University of Victoria for 20 years, providing administrative support in Accounting Services, VP Research, VP Finance and Operations, and the office of the University Secretary.
Teresa began her administrative working career in a hospital setting for 18 years before relocating to Victoria from Ottawa, Ontario.
Stacey O’Sullivan joined PCIC in February 2021 to support the User Engagement and Training Specialist in stakeholder engagement surrounding climate data and climate adaptation. Stacey completed her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Sciences at the University of Waterloo in 2013 and spent six years working as an environmental technician in industry, consulting, and government contexts. She recently returned to Waterloo to complete a Master of Climate Change program, and is excited to apply her learnings in climate adaptation to her role with PCIC.
Samah Larabi is a Post-Doctoral Scientist in Hydrology at PCIC. Her work at PCIC focus on the hydrodynamic modelling of reservoirs and investigation of the potential impact of climate change on the management of water release and fish habitat. Samah earned her Phd in water sciences at INRS-ETE in Quebec and holds an engineering degree in Mathematics and Modelling from Polytech Clermont-Ferrand, Graduate School of Engineering, in France. Her doctoral research focused on the development of innovative automatic calibration methods for hydrological models.
