Rate My Professor Sophie Nowicki

Sophie Nowicki is the Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University at Buffalo, serving also as Director of the Center for Geological and Climate Hazards and core faculty in the UB RENEW Institute. She holds a PhD in Theoretical Glaciology from University College London (2007), an MSc in Remote Sensing and Image Processing, and a BSc in Geophysics from the University of Edinburgh. Before joining the University at Buffalo in 2020, she worked as a Research Scientist and Deputy Chief of the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from 2009 to 2020, contributing to projects such as Operation IceBridge and SeaRISE, an international effort on ice sheet sensitivity to environmental forcings. She led the coupling of ice sheet models to NASA climate models GEOS-5 and ModelE.

Nowicki's research examines the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, their interactions with the global climate system, and impacts on sea level rise, using applied mathematics, remote sensing, and numerical modeling from local to continental scales. She co-leads the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6 (ISMIP6), providing projections used in IPCC reports. Notable publications include 'Projected land ice contributions to twenty-first century sea level rise' (Edwards et al., Nature, 2021), 'Ocean, Cryosphere and Sea Level Change' in IPCC AR6 (Fox-Kemper et al., 2021), and 'Future sea level change under CMIP5 and CMIP6 scenarios from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets' (Payne et al., Geophysical Research Letters, 2021). She was a lead author for IPCC AR6 Chapter 9. Honors include the 2022 Richardson Medal to the ISMIP6 team by the International Glaciological Union, naming of Nowicki Foreland in West Antarctica, NASA Cryospheric Sciences Most Valuable Player award, and Robert Goddard Honor Award for Mentoring. Leadership roles encompass Division Head for Ice Sheets at the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences, executive committee for IMBIE phases 2 and 3, and member of the NASA Sea Level Change Team.