Haider Taha (PhD 1990, University of California at Berkeley) has been actively engaged in meteorological and photochemical/air quality modeling and research since starting his graduate studies at Berkeley in 1984. That year, he also joined the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) as a graduate student research assistant in the Applied Science Division. His masters and doctoral theses at UC Berkeley developed methodologies and incorporated early efforts in "urbanizing" mesoscale meteorological models, improving boundary-layer parameterizations and urban canopy-layer representations, thus improving the regional specificity of meteorological simulations and the accuracy of dependent photochemical, energy demand, and thermal environmental modeling. In 2003, Dr. Taha resigned from the Berkeley Lab to start Altostratus Inc. and in 2004 was appointed as an Adjunct Professor  in the Department of Meteorology at San Jose State University. In 2008, he was appointed Adjunct Professor at the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Portland State University.

As a post-doctoral fellow (1990-1992) and then a Staff Scientist (1992-2003) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Dr. Taha was the lead meteorological and photochemical modeler for the HIG's studies and projects on meso-meteorology, urban climates, heat islands, and air quality. Beginning in 1997, he became Principal Investigator. Projects he worked on were funded by the US Department of Energy (US DOE), US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), California Energy Commission (CEC), Toronto Atmospheric Fund (TAF, Canada), Southern California Edison (SCE), California Institute for Energy and Environment (CIEE), and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). In 1997, he was awarded a Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) to further expand his work and international collaborative efforts. Current projects he is working on at Altostratus Inc. are described in the current projects page.  

Dr. Taha has published on the topics of heat islands, urban climates, meteorology, and regional/mesoscale meteorological-photochemical modeling (see partial list of publications for example), has served as a technical reviewer for scientific peer-reviewed publications, technical proposals, guest editor, and invited contributor to book and encyclopedia sections on meteorology and heat islands. He is a full member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the International Association for Urban Climate (IAUC), the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN), and a number of regional and regulatory modeling working groups. While at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he also was a technical supervisor for scholars and visiting scientists with the HIG and a thesis committee member for graduate students at San Jose State University and the University of California (Berkeley and Los Angeles).

Coming soon to this page:  Associates and Collaborators