Marianne Cowherd

I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley. I will be an assistant professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Montana State University starting in Fall 2025.

I study climate science and the cryosphere. Most of my work deals with nonstationarity in snow and water systems -- both the problems this causes and the potential solutions. Specific topics include the atmospheric drivers of snow dro†ughts, post-fire hydrology, and machine learning applications in snow pattern repeatability shift. I am generally interested in how nonstationarity impacts environmental observations and in particular our ability to understand change.

I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I earned undergraduate and masters degrees at Stanford University as part of the Bob & Norma Street Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory, where I worked on oscillatory wave-current boundary layers. I earned my PhD from the UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, where I was a DOE Computational Sciences Graduate Fellow.

I enjoy running, soccer, and word games. I previously worked in miRNA alignment research and public genetics education with miRcore.