Areas of Research/Interests

My overall research objective is to understand how soil and atmospheric moisture organizes across different spatial and temporal scales and in particular how the interactions with the atmosphere, vegetation and landscape constrain this organization.

Research interest:

1. -Land-atmosphere interactions
   

2. -Hydrometeorology
   

3. -Convection
   

4. -Ecohydrology
   

5. -Remote sensing, data assimilation of remote sensing measurements to estimate soil moisture and surface heat fluxes
   

6. -Land-surface models
   

7. -Stochastic processes
   

Work Experience

2011-now    Assistant Professor (tenure-track)

                    Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering

                    Columbia University

2009-2011   Assistant Professor (non-tenure-track)

                    Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering

                    Columbia University

2006-2007   Engineer

                    NATIXIS (Investment Bank)
                    IT/Quantitative Analyst in the Security Derivative Team

2002-2004   Engineer

                    French Space Agency (CNES)

                    Research Center for Remote Sensing of Biosphere (CESBIO)

                    French-Moroccan project for water resources in south-eastern Morocco

Education

2007-2009   Doctor of Science

                    Massachusetts institute of Technology

                    Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

                    Thesis: “Spectral analysis of a linearized coupled land-atmosphere system”

                    Advisor: Prof Dara Entekhabi

2004-2006   Master of Science

                    Massachusetts institute of Technology

                    Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

                    Thesis: “Analysis of the diurnal behavior of Evaporative Fraction”

                    Advisor: Prof Dara Entekhabi            

1999-2002   Bachelor of Science

                    SupAéro (French Space and Aeronautical School)

                    Major: Applied Mathematcs

Grants/proposal

1. -NSF/AGS grant ($259,000, total $500,000) with Benjamin Lintner (Rutgers) and Kirsten Findell (NOAA-GFDL): “”Quantifying the impacts of atmospheric and land-surface heterogeneity and scale on soil moisture-precipitation feedbacks”
   

2. -Alliance Columbia - Ecole Polytechnique grant ($3,500): “Soil moisture-precipitation feedback”
   

Award

2012: Invited professor Ecole Normale Supérieure - Ulm, Paris

2004-2005: Shoettler-MIT fellowship

Models

1. -PBCM (Probabilistic Bulk Coupled Model): bulk model of the coupled boundary layer and shallow convection (Gentine et al. 2012a and b)
   

2. -ICARE-SVAT (Interactive CAnopy Radiative Exchange - Soil Vegetation Atmosphere Transfer model) used at the French Space Agency - CESBIO (Gentine et al. 2007)
   

Teaching

1. -Undergraduate: linear algebra
   

2. -Graduate: land-atmosphere interactions, principle of applied maths, physical hydrology