Dr. Diana Francis
Dr. Diana Francis Assistant Professor & Head of ENGEOS Lab

Contact Information
diana.francis@ku.ac.ae +971 2 312 4226

Biography

Assistant Professor, Department of Earth Sciences and Head of the ENGEOS Lab

Dr. Diana Francis is an internationally-renown Atmospheric Scientist with a PhD in Atmospheric and Climate Sciences from Sorbonne Universités – Paris, France, which ranks 35 globally and 1st in France. After her PhD, Dr. Francis worked for more than 10 years in Academia and Scientific Research at different prestigious institutions in Europe including the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), the Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique (CEA) and the European Commission (EC).

Dr. Francis’ work focuses on Climate and Environmental Sciences at regional scale. She has a rich experience in remote sensing and numerical modelling applied to different environmental questions. Her achievements have made a considerable contribution to advancing scientific knowledge in a wide range of topics such as climate change and extreme weather, aerosol interaction with climate, tropical meteorology, polar meteorology, climate change and polar ice, air pollution, fog, rain, dust storms and air quality. The significance of her findings is reflected in her outstanding publication record and international network of collaborations.

In 2020, Dr. Francis joined Khalifa University as Senior Scientist and Head of the Environmental and Geophysical Sciences (ENGEOS) lab where she significantly contributed with her team to the development of Khalifa University’s research portfolio in Climate and Atmospheric sciences. Dr. Francis is currently the principal investigator of several projects related to Climate & Environmental Sciences and Earth Observations.

Beside her role at Khalifa University, Dr. Francis is currently the lead of the Climate Data & Modelling cluster of the UAE Climate Change Research Network (CCRN) of the Ministry of Climate Change and the Environment (MOCCAE) and the UAE National representative of the SOLAS international network. She is currently on the editorial board of Frontiers in Environmental Sciences as Associate Editor for Atmosphere and Climate and regularly serves as a reviewer for top journals in her field such as Nature, Science and Science Advances.

Visit Dr. Diana Francis's profile on ResearchGate
Visit Dr. Diana Francis's profile on ORCID


Education
  • PhD, Atmospheric Sciences, Sorbonne Universités, Paris, France

Teaching
  • Atmospheric Dynamics
  • Climate Science
  • Environmental Science
  • Remote Sensing
  • Numerical Modelling


Research
Research Interests
  • Tropical meteorology
  • Polar meteorology and polar ice
  • Natural hazards
  • Air quality
  • Fog
  • Dust storms
  • Cloud-formation
  • Renewable energies
  • Climate change
  • Greenhouse gases