Contact Information
Chicago, IL 60606
Biography
Dr. Ashish Sharma is the Climate and Urban Sustainability Lead at the Discovery Partners Institute, University of Illinois System. He is a faculty in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He holds a joint appointment as a Climate Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. In addition to a Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Jaypee University of Information Technology, he holds a Masters and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Arizona State University. Dr. Sharma has expertise in atmospheric sciences, focusing on regional climate, air quality, and assessing adaptation and mitigation strategies. Through collaborative research across science, engineering, social sciences, and policy, he studies environmental justice issues including heat, fog, air quality, and high-impact weather. He has published more than 30 journal articles and 40 conference papers. Dr. Sharma has received funding from the U.S. DOE, NSF, NASA, Walder Foundation, and IBM. Dr. Sharma is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. He serves on the Trust for Public Land's Natural Solutions Tool advisory committee (2022). He has co-authored an assessment of climate change impacts on the Great Lakes region (2019), a special climate assessment for Illinois (2021), and a NOAA report on aligning research priorities to enhance resilience to extreme heat (2019). As a co-author of the first climate action plan for the Chicago metro region (2021), he has received numerous awards, including the American Planning Association Merit in Sustainability Award (2022) and the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions Climate Leadership Award (2021). The Illinois State Museum exhibits his work on climate change, injustice, and heat in Chicago. He has contributed as a reviewer for the IPCC report and many international scientific journals. Dr. Sharma is a member of the US EPA Science Advisory Board for the EJ Screen review panel. He is the Associate Editor of the Frontiers in Environmental Science: Atmosphere and Climate journal. He has testified on a subject matter hearing on urban heat island effect and solutions to the City of Chicago Committee on Environmental Protection and Energy (2021). He has briefed the U.S. Senate Climate Taskforce, U.S. House of Representatives, and congressional staff on Capitol Hill on the impacts of climate change in the Great Lakes Region (2019).
Research Interests
- Regional climate modeling: Land/ocean/lake-atmosphere interactions, lake breeze, UHI effect, land data assimilation, hydrometeorological extremes
- Microscale modeling: Climate modeling at hyper-local scales (~m scales)
- Climate adaptation and mitigation: Interactions between urban ecology and urban heat island in a changing climate, green and cool roofs, energy consumption and savings with best practices
- Air quality modeling: meteorology and atmospheric chemistry feedbacks
- Climate action plans: climate policies
- Other focus areas: Machine Learning (ML), crime and environment
Education
- Ph.D. Aerospace Engineering, Arizona State University, 2012
- M.S. Aerospace Engineering, Arizona State University, 2009
- B.Tech. Electronics and Communication Engineering, Jaypee University of Information Technology, 2007
Grants
- National Science Foundation (NSF): A Proposed Workshop on Interdisciplinary Sustainable Solutions for Urban Systems in a Changing Climate (Award no: 1929856); PI Donald Wuebbles, Ashish Sharma, Lei Zhao, and Amy Ando; duration: 05/01/2019 – 04/30/2020; $50,000
- DOE, DoD, NASA, and NOAA: A Proposed Workshop on Urban Scale Processes and their Representation in High Spatial Resolution Earth System Models; PI Donald J. Wuebbles (UIUC), Katherine Calvin (PNNL), Charles Catlett (ANL), Beth Drewniak (ANL), Rao Kotamarthi (ANL), Ashish Sharma (UIUC): 10/01/2018 - 09/30/2019
- EPA Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI): Cover crops prevent nutrient runoff and promote climate resiliency in Great Lakes watersheds (GL 00E02207); PI Alan Hamlet (ND), Ashish Sharma (UIUC), Jennifer Tank (ND), Sheila Christopher (ND), and Todd Royer (IU); duration: 08/01/2017 – 07/31/2020; $564,314
Awards and Honors
- 2023 Crain’s Chicago Business 40 Under 40
- Climate Leadership Award at the Annual Climate Leadership Conference hosted by the EPA selected Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) and The Climate Registry.
- Fellow, Royal Meteorological Society (2016-present)
- Executive Committee Member, Illinois Center for Urban Resilience and Environmental Sustainability (IL-CURES) (2019-present)
- Exhibit in the Illinois State Museum on the impacts of climate change, injustice and heat in Chicago
selected publications
Kristovich, D.A., Takle, E., Young, G.S. and Sharma, A., 2019. 100 years of progress in mesoscale planetary boundary layer meteorological research. American Meteorological Society 100-Year Anniversary Monograph. https://doi.org/10.1175/AMSMONOGRAPHS-D-18-0023.1.
Sharma, A., Hamlet, A.F., Fernando, H.J.S., Catlett, C.E., Horton, D.E., Kotamarthi, V.R., Kristovich, D.A.R., Packman, A.I., Tank, J.L. and Wuebbles, D.J., 2018. The Need for an Integrated Land‐Lake‐Atmosphere Modeling System, Exemplified by North America's Great Lakes Region. Earth's Future, 6(10), pp.1366-1379. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF000870.
Sharma, A., Woodruff, S., Budhathoki, M., Hamlet, A.F., Chen, F. and Fernando, H.J.S., 2018. Role of green roofs in reducing heat stress in vulnerable urban communities—A multidisciplinary approach. Environ. Res. Lett., 13(9), p.094011. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aad93c.
Sharma, A., Fernando, H.J., Hamlet, A.F., Hellmann, J.J., Barlage, M. and Chen, F., 2017. Urban meteorological modeling using WRF: a sensitivity study. Int. J. Climatol. , 37(4), 1885–1900. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.4819.
Sharma, A., Conry, P., Fernando, H.J.S., Hamlet, A.F., Hellmann, J.J. and Chen, F., 2016. Green and cool roofs to mitigate urban heat island effects in the Chicago metropolitan area: Evaluation with a regional climate model. Environ. Res. Lett., 11(6), 64004. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/11/6/064004.
Conry, P., Sharma, A., Potosnak, M.J., Leo, L.S., Bensman, E., Hellmann, J.J. and Fernando, H.J., 2015. Chicago’s heat island and climate change: Bridging the scales via dynamical downscaling. J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 54(7), 1430–1448. https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-14-0241.1.