Vrinda Desai

Dr. Vrinda D. Desai joined NCICS as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in December 2023. She is working on historical Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) data. Desai integrates her skills from her PhD with her work in climate science to investigate climate patterns in large datasets.

Desai completed her BS in physics from Centre College, KY, where she was a John C. Young scholar doing research on blood spatter analysis. She went on to earn her PhD in physics at North Carolina State University under the mentorship of Dr. Karen E. Daniels. Her research focused on the transition of creeping landslides to catastrophic failure within the realm of complex systems. Collaborating with an interdisciplinary team across the U.S. and funded by NSF-Prediction of and Resilience against Extreme Events (PREEVENTS), she developed a method to quantify the shift from stable to unstable in slow-moving, deep-seated landslides. During her doctoral studies, she led a department-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) survey, co-created the DEI Physics committee, and served as an instructor for data science and visualization courses at NC State.

Vrinda is excited to be in Asheville, surrounded by the mountains, while delving into the complex system known as climate change. In her free time, she enjoys martial arts, swimming in bodies of water, and getting lost in books.