Updated July 26, 2026
Project Scientist position at UC Berkeley
We are seeking a Project Scientist to help create advanced forecasts of high-impact weather and climate phenomena for deployment at scale in tropical countries. As part of a multidisciplinary collaboration between universities, international development agencies, and governmental ministries in multiple countries, the selected candidate will contribute to the development of forecasts of dangerous heat stress, precipitation, monsoon onset, and other tropical phenomena using a range of physics-based, artificial intelligence, and statistical weather prediction models. The candidate will play a central role in Berkeley’s new Tropical Risk Project; this project has grown out of a collaboration with the University of Chicago that, over the past two years, developed new AI-enabled long-lead forecasts of rainy season onset that were distributed to over 50 million farmers in India and subsequently institutionalized in the Indian government.
This Project Scientist role will help broaden this program to other phenomena, including heat stress, and support its expansion into other countries. In addition to original scholarly research, the role will involve managing activities of the project and contributing to writing of grant proposals. The position will be supervised by Profs. William Boos (Department of Earth and Planetary Science) and Lucas Vargas Zeppetello (Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management).
For more details and to apply, see the formal job posting. For questions about the position, contact Ankit Joshi, Director of the Human-Centered Weather Forecasts initiative.
PhD student position at UC Berkeley (applications still being evaluated)
A position in the PhD program of Berkeley’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science will likely be available in our research group, with a start date in August 2027. Applicants must have strong quantitative backgrounds, with outstanding grades in numerous physics and math courses at the undergraduate level. Each student who takes on one of these positions will, over the course of five years and in collaboration with William Boos, produce a body of original research that constitutes a doctoral thesis. Our group has several focus areas for possible thesis topics, but we also encourage you to bring your own ideas. See here for more information on our PhD program.
Students entering our PhD program must pass the qualifying exam near the end of the second year, and are expected to serve as a teaching assistant for at least two semesters during their first two years. Serving as a teaching assistant for these two semesters provides what we consider the minimum amount of teaching experience needed for many careers, including those in academia.
These graduate student positions include financial support for the duration of your studies, typically five years. Details of this support are determined by the contract between the University of California and the United Auto Workers Union, which UC graduate students have joined. The total funding that is used to support your five years of graduate studies usually exceeds USD 500,000 and comes from a variety of sources, primarily governmental research grants to our research group; fellowship programs and compensation for teaching assistant duties may also contribute.
Prospective students who are interested in this opportunity are encouraged to apply to the EPS Graduate Program and list William Boos as your preferred faculty advisor. We will arrange video calls with a subset of candidates after applications are reviewed (typically in January and February). We likely does not have the capacity to correspond or meet individually before the application deadline, but if you decide to apply please do send William Boos an email to let him know your application is coming. Any manuscript drafts, project reports, or similar writing samples that you can submit will be helpful; you can include these with your formal application or send them separately by email.
Berkeley charges an application fee of USD 135 for US citizens and Permanent Residents, and USD 155 for all others. Students who cannot afford to pay this application fee can apply for a fee waiver if they are a US citizen or Permanent Resident. Unfortunately, Berkeley does not offer fee waivers for international students. However, if you are an international student who cannot afford to pay the application fee, you may upload a single PDF file containing a complete transcript (unofficial is fine), a personal statement, a statement of purpose, and a cover letter briefly explaining your inability to pay the application fee to this web portal by November 1, 2025 (roughly one month ahead of Berkeley’s official application deadline); then send an email confirming you have done so. Students whose applications are very strongly competitive will be contacted and asked to provide a full application, including reference letters, by the official university deadline, and our research group will pay the $155 application fee.