Cristian Proistosescu

Cristian Proistosescu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Climate, Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, part of the School of Earth, Society & Environment. He holds a B.A. in Physics from Princeton University (2009) and a Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard University (2017). His research focuses on coupled atmosphere-ocean dynamics, climate sensitivity, stochastic climate variability, and the application of statistical inference and machine learning to earth sciences.

Proistosescu’s work addresses critical questions such as the drivers of climate variability (e.g., low-cloud feedbacks, western Pacific warming patterns), the integration of paleoclimate data to constrain future projections, and the economic implications of climate risk. His research group, Climate Dynamics and Data Science (CDDS) @ UIUC, explores interdisciplinary topics including climate economics and exploratory projects like seafloor bathymetry analysis.

• Highlighted Contributions: Co-authored influential studies on climate sensitivity (e.g., Reviews of Geophysics 2020), and developed frameworks for understanding feedbacks via Green’s function approaches.
• Courses Taught: Climate and Global Change (ATMS 140), Climate Dynamics (ATMS 507), and Statistical Inference for Earth Sciences (GEOL 593/ATMS 597).
• Recent Activities: Launched new projects on carbon dioxide as a risky asset and climate-economic linkages, with Ph.D. students Maile and Pappu joining in 2022.

His team collaborates across disciplines, emphasizing data-driven approaches to address climate challenges. Proistosescu is affiliated with the Department of Geology and actively engages with international conferences (e.g., AGU 2022 presentations).