Meet Dr. Zeller!
Dr. Elke Zeller is a climate scientist and postdoctoral scholar at the University of Arizona in Dr. Jessica Tierney’s paleoclimatology lab in the Department of Geosciences. Her research centers on interactions among vegetation, climate, and ecosystems. Since joining the university, she has broadened this work by investigating how vegetation influenced extreme paleoweather events – ancient episodes of unusual weather.
Her climate science career is shaped by a wide-ranging international background. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry in the Netherlands and a Master’s in Financial Engineering in Hawaii. Later, she spent three years at First Hawaiian Bank refining her programming and data analysis skills. After moving to South Korea for her husband’s research position, she transitioned into research-support roles that deepened her engagement with scientific data and ultimately led her to pursue a PhD in Climate Science at Pusan National University.
She studies Earth’s past climates using computer simulations and natural records – such as ice cores – that preserve clues about ancient climate and atmospheric conditions. She is especially interested in how vegetation shapes climate and uses models guided by pollen data to test how different plant patterns influence climate outcomes. In her postdoctoral work, she has expanded into paleoweather, using long climate simulations to explore how past extreme events, like extreme rainfall and hurricanes, behaved. Her research is broadly interdisciplinary, spanning climate science, ecology, and related fields.
Dr. Zeller explains that her PhD program offered limited teaching opportunities, which has made her especially eager to develop these skills as a postdoc. She is enthusiastic about the teaching resources available at the University of Arizona and about her acceptance into the CIRTL Postdoc Pathways Program, through which she is earning a teaching certificate. This past semester, she developed experience with student-centered learning approaches, preparing her for her first co-teaching assignment this spring: an interdisciplinary course integrating geology, hydrology, ecology, and soil science. Apart from her enthusiasm for teaching, Dr. Zeller is also
eager to explore topics beyond her PhD as she continues to establish herself at the University of Arizona. Her previous work examined early humans’ adaptations to past ecosystems; now she looks forward to expanding into other areas of climate science, including paleoweather – the study of climates that existed during earlier geologic ages.