The McKinnon group


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Karen McKinnon

Associate Professor, Statistics and Data Science, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Karen McKinnon is a professor of Statistics and the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research sits at the nexus of climate change and statistics, and is aimed at improving our understanding and prediction of climate extremes, variability, and change. She is a 2024 NSF CAREER awardee, a 2023 Kavli Fellow, and a 2021 Packard Fellow in Science and Engineering, and she has served as an advisor for both city governments and private companies regarding climate change. Prof. McKinnon received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Harvard University, as well as an M.Sc. from Victoria University of Wellington. She was an Advanced Study Program post-doc at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and an Applied Scientist at Descartes Labs before joining UCLA.

Email: kmckinnon at ucla dot edu
CV
Google Scholar
LinkedIn

Talia Anderson

NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Scholar

Talia is a NOAA Climate & Global Change postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Karen McKinnon in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA. Broadly, she is interested in studying climate variability and change, and its impacts, in mountain regions across different spatial and temporal scales. Her postdoctoral research is focused on enhancing the predictability of Central American rainfall using hybrid dynamical and statistical methods. Talia received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Geography from the University of Arizona.

Email: tanderson at ucar dot edu
Website

Nathan Hwangbo

Fifth year graduate student, Statistics and Data Science

Nathan is a fifth-year PhD student in the Department of Statistics at UCLA. His current research is focused on better understanding long-term climate variability, using tree ring data to develop Bayesian models for climate reconstruction before the widespread use of meteorological instruments.

Email: nhwangbo at ucla dot edu

Kyle McEvoy

Fourth year graduate student, Statistics and Data Science

Kyle is a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Statistics at UCLA. His current research is focused on multiple hypothesis testing in climate research, exploring how correlation through space and time impact the false discovery rate and affect inference, and on modeling the changes in precipitation variance.

Email: kylemcevoy at ucla dot edu

Madeleine Beckner

Third year graduate student, Statistics and Data Science

Mady is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Statistics at UCLA. Her current research interests involve leveraging statistical methodology to improve and inform land-atmosphere interaction models.

Email: mbeckner at ucla dot edu

Alumni

Suqin Duan, IoES post-doc. Now an Assistant Project Scientist at UCLA working with Prof. David Neelin.
Wenwen Kong, IoES post-doc. Now a Data Scientist at Studio X.
Sam Baugh, Statistics PhD (2022). Now an Assistant Professor of Statistics at PSU
Surabhi Agrawal, Statistics MS (2022). Now a Data Scientist at Pacific Life.
Kristen Fukunaga, Mathematics BS (2021). Now a masters student at UW Statistics.
Dhruv Chakraborty, Computational Mathematics BS (2021). Now a Product Scientist at Indeed.com.
Avery Robinson, Statistics BS (2021). Now at Silicon Valley Bank.
Stephanie Doe, Applied Mathematics BS (2021). Now a Data Scientist at MOBE.
Russell Horowitz, IoES Master's (2021). Now a PhD student at the Basque Centre for Climate Change.
Chris Reed, IoES BS (2020). Now a Data Analyst at wikiHow.
Pete Jourgensen, Computer Science Master's degree (2019). Now a Data Scientist at Deep 6 AI.





Join the group

Information for all prospective group members

Research in the McKinnon group is on the physical climate system, including the development of novel statistical and machine learning methodologies to answer scientific questions about the climate system. A strong quantitative background (including in statistics, computer science, physics, and applied math) is strongly encouraged, and is more important than a background in earth or atmospheric science specifically. Research areas include weather extremes (heat, humidity, precipitation), wildfire, internal variability across timescales, land/atmosphere interactions, and the climate response to human influences. If you are interested more broadly in questions related to sustainability or the social sciences as related to the environment, please contact other relevant faculty members at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Prospective undergraduate students

At this time, I am not able to take on undergraduate students in the group. Please check back in later!

Prospective graduate students

Applications for starting a PhD in Fall 2026 will open in Fall 2025.

Prospective post-docs

I am currently recruiting for a post-doc to work on land-atmosphere interactions and their role in heat extremes funded by my NSF CAREER award. Read more about the position here and apply here.

In addition, please reach out if you want to discuss post-doctoral fellowship options. In your email, please include the fellowship(s) you are interested in applying to, your CV, and a pargraph or two of your background, research interests, and goals for your postdoc. Some potential funding sources for post-docs are the NOAA Global Change post-doc, the various NSF post-docs, the Schmidt Science Fellows, and the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program for female and minority PhD recipients. For those interested in climate change impacts to ecosystems, the USGS Climate Adaptation Postdoctoral Fellows Program may also be of interest.