Sylvia Sullivan

Assistant Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering
Member of the Graduate Faculty

Sylvia received her BS in chemical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2012 and her PhD in chemical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2017. She was a postdoc at Columbia University for two years and a Young Investigator Fellow at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology for another two. She started as an assistant professor at the University of Arizona in 2022.

Sylvia is interested in multiscale interactions in the atmosphere, from ice crystal nucleation and fragmentation (crystallization and attrition) at the smallest scales to mesoscale storm propagation and evolution at larger scales. The group designs benchtop experiments to understand cloud processes and runs storm-resolving models on the UA high-performance computing cluster to quantify impacts on surface rainfall rates and the atmospheric energy balance.

Degrees

  • PhD Chemical Engineering
    • Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, United States
    • Multi-scale modeling of in-cloud ice formation
  • BS Chemical Engineering
    • California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, United States

Work Experience

  • Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2019 - 2021)
  • Columbia University, New York, New York (2017 - 2019)

Interests

Teaching

aerosol physics, cloud and precipitation physics, (geophysical) fluid dynamics, numerical methods
 

Research

atmospheric ice nucleation and microphysics, dynamics and microphysics of mesoscale convective storms, atmospheric and climate modeling, benchtop microphysical experiments

Courses

Chemical Engineer Mdling

CHEE 402 (Fall 2024)
 

Air Pollution II:Aerosol

ATMO 469B (Spring 2024)
ATMO 469B (Spring 2023)
ATMO 469B (Spring 2022)
ATMO 569B (Spring 2024)
ATMO 569B (Spring 2023)
ATMO 569B (Spring 2022)
CHEE 569B (Spring 2024)
CHEE 569B (Spring 2023)
CHEE 569B (Spring 2022)
ENVS 569B (Spring 2022)

Independent Study

CHEE 599 (Spring 2024)

Dissertation

CHEE 920 (Spring 2024)
CHEE 920 (Fall 2023)
CHEE 920 (Fall 2022)

Selected Publications

Chapters

  • Chakraborty, S., Sullivan, S., & Feng, Z. (2023). An Overview of Mesoscale Convective Systems: Global Climatology, Satellite Observations, and Modeling Strategies. In Geophysical Monograph Series(pp 195--221). Wiley.
  • Sullivan, S., & Hoose, C. (2023). Science of cloud and climate science: An analysis of the literature over the past 50 years. In Geophysical Monograph Series.
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