Drs. Mounir Chrit and Marwa Majdi Join Faculty

The Department of Atmospheric Sciences is pleased to announce that Dr. Mounir Chrit and Dr. Marwa Majdi have joined the department as Research Assistant Professors.

Mounir Chrit’s research focuses on addressing weather needs for Unmanned Aircraft Systems using trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, risk assessment, Research to Operations processes and Data Assimilation. He previously worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UND with Pr. Mark Askelson on projects with the Research Institue for Autonomous Systems (RIAS) and the FAA’s center of Excellence for UAS Research (ASSURE) and received multiple grants to support his research. His interests outside of work are family time and music.

Marwa previously worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UND with Dr. David Delene on writing proposals targeting funds from federal and non-federal agencies, conducting several research projects, and mentoring graduate and undergraduate students in their research projects. Marwa’s research interests include atmospheric aerosols, cloud/fog microphysics, weather data processing, multiscale modeling, machine learning, and weather forecasting. Marwa leveraged her 6-year career in atmospheric sciences to develop several machine learning models applied to aviation weather, mainly the visibility and cloud ceiling camera-based machine learning system for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) operations that estimates visibility and cloud ceiling from camera images without deploying high-cost instruments. Marwa earned her Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences at École des Ponts ParisTech in France. Her thesis focused mainly on improving Chemistry Transport Models’ capabilities to simulate the impact of wildfires on the particulate matter budget in the Euro-Mediterranean region. In her free time, Marwa enjoys playing the oud, reading books, taking and editing photos, testing new cake recipes, listening to music, and spending quality time with her family.