Shan Kowalski, NASA Langley researcher focused on clouds, aerosols and ML

Dr. Shan Kowalski is a scientific researcher at NASA Langley Research Center and a mother of two girls.

She earned an M.S. (2007) and a Ph.D. (2011) in atmospheric science in France, conducting M.S. work with X-band and K-band radars and Ph.D. work using the space-borne polarimeter PARASOL. After completing NASA’s Postdoctoral Program at Langley in 2015 she became a contractor and began working with the CALIPSO space-borne lidar team.

Kowalski has worked with a range of satellite observations and has focused on clouds, aerosols and their interactions, including Monte Carlo radiative transfer simulations for lidar. She has co-authored papers on topics such as identifying aerosol subtypes from CALIPSO lidar profiles using deep machine learning and on global cloud droplet number concentration with A-Train satellites.

Her recent interests include machine learning applications to satellite data and model simulations. Her listed roles and projects include Senior Research Scientist at Coherent Applications, Inc. at NASA Langley (2023–present), prior research scientist work at SSAI (2015–2023), participation in the NASA Postdoc Program (2012–2015), and project roles such as PI on a 2024 Digital Transformer Program to build a lidar surrogate radiative transfer model for clear sky and Co‑Investigator on the CloudSat and CALIPSO Science Team (2023–2025); outcomes of these projects are not stated.

Key Topics

Science, Shan Kowalski, Nasa Langley, Calipso, Parasol, Machine Learning