People

Prof. Apostolos Voulgarakis holds the AXA Chair in Wildfires and Climate, based at the Technical University of Crete. He is the Director of the AtmECC lab, a dynamic, growing group studying the nexus between climate change, atmospheric pollution, and wildfires. He is an expert on global atmospheric and Earth system modelling. In particular his work has focused on fire-climate interactions and the role of fire in driving the variability of aerosols and other radiatively important constituents in the atmosphere. Following a BSc in Physics (AUTh, 2002), an MSc in Environmental Engineering (TUCrete, 2004), and a PhD in Atmospheric Chemistry (Cambridge, 2008), he held research positions at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University (2009-2012), before moving to Imperial College as a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Reader, between 2012 and 2019. In partnership with the UK Met Office, Voulgarakis and his team led the development of the first fire model (INFERNO) incorporated into the UK’s Earth system model (UKESM1), which provides the basis for the UK’s official long-term climate and Earth system projections. He has led and been involved in several other international collaborative research projects variously funded by NASA, the European Commission, the UK Natural Environment Research Council, the British Council, and the UK National Centre for Earth Observation, the General Secretariat of Research and Technology, Greece, involving collaborators from around the world (the UK, US, China, India, Greece, France, Norway, amongst others). He has also held major roles in various global model intercomparison projects, such as the Atmospheric Chemistry & Climate Modelling Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP), the Precipitation Driver Response Model Intercomparison Project (PDRMIP), the Fire Model Intercomparison Project (FireMIP), and the Chemistry-Climate Model Initiative (CCMI), and was a Contributing Author in two chapters of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).