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Caroline Juang

Photo of Caroline Juang

Address:

4800 Oak Grove Drive

Pasadena, CA 91109

Curriculum Vitae:

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Member of:

Water & Ecosystems

Biography

Caroline Juang is a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She earned her Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York, NY, where she trained as a hydroclimatologist and fire scientist and presented her dissertation, “Wildfires, Aridity, and the Pacific: Drivers of enhanced wildfire activity across the western United States since the 1980s”. Prior to her Ph.D., Caroline was a project coordinator at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/SSAI in Greenbelt, MD, where she managed the NASA citizen science project Landslide Reporter. Caroline is interested in applying statistical modeling, in-situ and remotely sensed observations, and large-scale modeling outputs to monitor and predict wildfires, landslide susceptibility, and other hazards in California and the western US. Caroline is originally from Long Island, NY.

Education

  • Ph.D., Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University (2025)
  • M.Phil., Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University
  • M.A., Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University
  • B.A., Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University

Professional Experience

  • 2026–Present: NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
  • 2023–2025: NSF GRFP Fellow, Columbia University, New York, NY
  • 2020–2023: NASA FINESST Graduate Researcher, Columbia University, New York, NY
  • 2017–2019: Landslide Citizen Science Project Coordinator, Science Systems and Applications, Inc. (SSAI)/ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD

Research Interests

Western US, California, hydroclimate, wildfires, hazards, landslides, remote sensing, applied science

Selected Awards

  • 2025: NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellowship
  • 2021: NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) Fellowship
  • 2020: Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) Grant
  • 2019: Future Space Leader Program (FSLP) Fellowship
  • 2017: Brooke Owens Fellowship

Selected Publications

  1. (Under review) Juang, C. S., Williams, A.P., Seager, R. (2026). Contribution of La-Niña-like Pacific Ocean trend in sea-surface temperatures to western United States wildfire area, 1984-2022.
  2. (Under review) Williams, A. P., Hansen, W. D., Juang, C. S., Abatzoglou, J. T., Radeloff, V. C., Wang, B., Hall, J., Buch, J., and Madakumbura, G. D. (2026). The Western United States Large Forest-Fire Stochastic Simulator (WULFFSS) 1.0: A monthly gridded forest-fire model using interpretable statistics, EGUsphere [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2934.
  3. Williams, A. P., Juang, C. S., Short, K. C. (2025). The Western United States MTBS-Interagency database of large wildfires, 1984–2024 (WUMI2024a). Earth System Science Data, 17, 7359-7372. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-7359-2025.
  4. He, Q., Williams, A. P., Johnston, M. R., Juang, C. S., Wang, B. (2025). Influence of Time- Averaging of Climate Data on Estimates of Atmospheric Vapor Pressure Deficit and Inferred Relationships With Wildfire Area in the Western United States. Geophysical Research Letters, 52, e2024GL113708. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL113708.
  5. Buch, J., Williams, A. P., Juang, C. S., Hansen, W. D., & Gentine, P. (2023). SMLFire1. 0: a stochastic machine learning (SML) model for wildfire activity in the western Unite States. Geoscientific Model Development, 16, 3407-3433. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-3407-2023.
  6. Juang, C.S., Williams, A.P., Abatzoglou, J.T., Balch, J.T., Hurteau, M.D., & Moritz, M.A. (2022). Rapid Growth of Large Forest Fires Drives the Exponential Response of Annual Forest-Fire Area to Aridity in the Western United States. Geophysical Research Letters, 49, e2021GL097131. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL097131. Media coverage in BBC News Podcast.
  7. Williams, A. P., Livneh, B., McKinnon, K.A., Hansen, W.D., Mankin, J.S., Cook, B.I., Smerdon, J.E., Varuolo-Clarke, A.M., Bjarke, N.R., Juang, C.S., & Lettenmaier, D. (2022). Growing impact of wildfire on western US water supply. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119 (10), e2114069119, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2114069119.
  8. Abatzoglou, J.T., Juang, C.S., Williams, A.P., Kolden, & Westerling, A.L. (2021). Increased synchronous fire danger in forests of the western United States. Geophysical Research Letters, 48, e2020GL091377. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL091377. Media coverage in AGU Eos.
  9. Juang, C.S., Stanley, T.A. & Kirschbaum, D.B. (2019). Using citizen science to expand the global map of landslides: Introducing the Cooperative Open Online Landslide Repository (COOLR). PLoS, e0218657. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218657. Media coverage in NASA Earth Observatory.
  10. Yu, C. C., Qiu, W., Juang, C. S., Mansukhani, M. M., Halmos, B., & Su, G. H. (2017). Mutant allele specific imbalance in oncogenes with copy number alterations: occurrence, mechanisms, and potential clinical implications. Cancer letters, 384, 86-93.
  11. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2017). Assessment of the National Space Foundation’s 2015 Geospace Portfolio Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/24666. Space Studies Board Intern. Conducted literature review.
  12. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2016). Extending Missions: NASA’s Space Science Mission Extensions and the Senior Review Process. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/23624. Space Studies Board Intern. Authored Appendix section.