Difei Deng

Dr. Difei Deng is a Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow at the School of Science, UNSW Canberra, where they have been since 2016. Their research focuses on extreme weather events, particularly tropical cyclones, with expertise in numerical modeling and atmospheric meso-scale dynamics. They are an Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes and affiliated with the Bushfire Research Group at UNSW Canberra.

• Research areas: Tropical cyclones, extreme rainfall, climate modeling, atmosphere-fire interactions
• Grants: ARC DECRA (2020-2023), UNSW Faculty Matching Funds (2020-2023)
• Awards: AMOS Penny Whetton Lecture Award (2024), UNSW High Quality Research Paper Award (2018-2020)

Research Trends: Recent work spans deep-learning architectures for tropical cyclone track forecasting, climate change impacts on cyclogenesis shifts, and rainfall enhancement mechanisms during landfalling cyclones. They apply numerical models to study storm-vortex interactions, moisture transport, and environmental feedback in extreme weather systems.

Scientific Awards:

• High Quality Research Paper Award (UNSW, 2018-2020)
• ARC DECRA Fellowship (2020-2023)
• AMOS Penny Whetton Lecture Award (2024)

Supervision & Grants: Dr. Deng supervises four students (Lu, Akter, Le, Huang) on projects involving extreme rainfall associated with tropical cyclones. They offer $35,000/year PhD scholarships for high-achieving candidates. Grants include funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) projects.