Gabrielle "Bee" Leung (PI)

I’m currently an Anna Julia Cooper fellow at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS), University of Wisconsin-Madison. I will be starting as an Assistant Professor at AOS in Fall 2026.

I grew up in Baguio City in the Philippines—one of the rainiest places in a very rainy country! I earned my B.S. in Physics, with a minor in Creative Writing, from Ateneo de Manila University. Prior to starting graduate school, I worked at the Manila Observatory, where I did research quantifing the exposure of vulnerable populations to air pollution and heat stress. I also went into the field as part of NASA CAMP2Ex.

I received both my M.S. and my Ph.D. from the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. My M.S. thesis focused on novel aspects of aerosol–cloud interactions, including feedbacks between increased emissions and aerosol removal processes and how the spatial distribution of aerosol emissions impacts cloud responses. My Ph.D. dissertation was funded by a NASA FINESST award. I used a combination of satellite observations, high-resolution modelling, and object-based analysis methods to understand how clouds and preciptiation respond to deforestation in Southeast Asia.

Currently, I’m interested in convection across the diurnal cycle. I spend a lot of time thinking about how changes in land use, aerosol emissions, and the thermodynamic environment impact the development of clouds across the day, and what those impacts mean for our weather and climate. I’m also on the science team for the NASA INCUS mission, for which I lead efforts to track storm objects in a massive database of simulated convection from all over the tropics and subtropics.

I’m passionate about science communication and justice in STEM, particularly issues related to the Global South. Outside of work, you can usually find me at the pottery studio, testing out a new recipe, or riding my bike somewhere pretty.