Rignot Research Group

Eric Rignot (Professor, Earth System Science)

Eric is an expert on polar ice sheets and the effects of global climate change on the cryosphere. He joined UCI in 2007, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he continues to be a senior research scientist. Eric manages research groups in both places. He uses satellites, airborne sensors, field data and computer models to understand the dynamics of glacier ice along the coasts of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets as well as in Alaska and Patagonia. His research has documented acceleration of ice loss in these places as a result of climate change.

Contact Eric Rignot
+1 949 824 3739

Bernd Scheuchl (Associate Project Scientist)

Bernd (Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia, Canada) has several years of experience in the field of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) remote sensing. He specializes in SAR interferometry and SAR polarimetry and worked in industrial and academic environments in Europe and North America. Bernd currently works on a NASA funded project generating an ice velocity map of Antarctica.
Contact Bernd Scheuchl
+1 949 824 8382

Jeremie Mouginot (Associate Project Scientist)

Jeremie (Ph.D. in Geophysics from the University of Grenoble, France) has been working with ground penetrating radar in polar regions and on Mars for several years. His research on Mars focused on the correction of ionospheric distortion, the surface reflectivity and the martian polar caps using the low frequency radar sounder MARSIS/Mars Express. He also specializes in SAR interferometry for glaciology.
Jeremie is currently working on NASA funded projects measuring ice thickness in polar regions and generating an ice velocity map of Antarctica.
Contact Jeremie Mouginot
+1 949 824 3931

Mathieu Morlighem (Assistant Project Scientist)

Mathieu (Ph.D. in ice sheet numerical modeling from Ecole Centrale Paris) is one of the core developers of the Ice Sheet System Model developed in partnership with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His research focuses on improving numerical projections of the ice sheet contribution to sea level rise in a warming climate. He joined ESS in 2012 to work on a NASA funded project to improve ice thickness mapping.

Contact Mathieu Morlighem

Feras Habbal (Postdoctoral affiliate, E. Rignot advisor)

Feras (Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology) is currently investigating numerical methods for improving simulations within the Ice Sheet System Model. Here, the goal is to push the state-of-the-art in terms of the size and accuracy of the models by exploiting parallel iterative solvers and preconditioning schemes.

Contact Feras Habbal

Yun Xu (PhD candidate)

Yun (M.Sc. in Atmospheric Sciences from Nanjing University, China) is using numerical models to study the submarine melting and its impacts on glacial dynamics. For her work, she focuses on Greenland tidewater glaciers.

Xin Li (Graduate student)

Lu An (Graduate student)

Lu (B.S. from Nanjing University, China) joined our group in 2011. She is currently attending courses and is exploring potential research topics in glaciology.

Our colleagues at JPL
(Ice Sheet System Model)