Welcome!

Short CV: PDF from October 2019
Email: brian dot magi at charlotte dot edu

I am an Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Geographical Sciences. My research explores air quality using low-cost air monitors, and data-oriented questions about climate. I work with students, academic and government researchers, regulators, non-profits, and communities on these questions.on these questions, but I also simply enjoy spending time tackling enormous datasets related to air quality and climate to better understand the Earth system. I teach courses at UNC Charlotte on topics related to air quality, cloud physics, atmospheric electricity, data analysis methods, programming for Earth Sciences, and global environmental change, all of which are original courses that I have created since 2011. I don’t teach all those courses every year, and have even handed some of them off to others in my department with similar expertise. My babies grew up! As a part of my administrative work at UNC Charlotte in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Geographical Sciences, I oversee the management of the Earth Science Masters in Science (MS) degree program. I describe some of my background below, but please browse my website using the links above to subjects like teaching and research. My short CV is at the top of this page. I also try to keep my Publications and Presentations pages updated. Easiest is to email me at brian dot magi at charlotte dot edu.

Postdoctoral Research

I was a postdoc at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in January 2007.  My office was at NOAA GFDL, but I was a postdoc through the Cooperative Institute with Princeton University. My supervisor at NOAA GFDL was Dr. V. Ramaswamy, an Atmospheric Scientist, and I worked closely with Dr. Paul Ginoux for over two years. In 2010, I started another postdoc with Professor Stephen Pacala in the Princeton University Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department. During my postdoc with Steve, I began developing the framework for a pretty advanced global fire model. In 2011, I landed a faculty job at UNC Charlotte. I feel very fortunate to have arrived in Charlotte and in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences (which is the former name of my department) when I did. Wait, are you still reading these ramblings?? Lessee, the best cartoon is Avatar: The Last Airbender. The best cookie is peanut butter chocolate chip.

Undergraduate and Graduate Research

Back to the right topic. I earned my Bachelors of Science degree in Physics and Applied Math from the University of Arizona (UofA) in Tucson, Arizona, in 1998 (!). While at UofA, I worked as an undergraduate assistant for Professor Kurt Thome at the UofA Remote Sensing Group, where for the first time, I experienced the excitement of data collection and analysis outside of undergraduate physics labs. In 1999, I started my graduate studies in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. I joined the Cloud and Aerosol Research Group where Professor Peter Hobbs was my advisor until 2005 when he passed away from a battle with cancer. After 2005, my PhD advisor was Professor Qiang Fu. While working with Peter, I went on two field campaigns called SAFARI-2K (southern Africa) and CLAMS (Virginia coastal area) to collect data. SAFARI-2K data served as the basis for my PhD Dissertation. I flew with a team of scientists and engineers in the University of Washington research aircraft collecting data throughout the troposphere and directly in the smoke plumes from the prolific savanna woodland and grass fires that happen every dry season in southern Africa. I also saw giraffes and zebra out my window while we were flying low, and 1000 foot tall sand dunes in the remote Namibian desert – it looked like Arrakis. I climbed a 700 foot tall dune, but found no giant sandworms. I did see a herd of ostriches running in the desert though and that was otherworldly.