Departmental Unit № 1
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (DEES) / Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO)
PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences
100% Full Funding Guaranteed (5 Years)
Funding Package: Full tuition waiver + 12-month living stipend (~$46,000/yr) + comprehensive health insurance guaranteed for 5 years through GSAS and Lamont-Doherty fellowships.
Fall Priority Deadline: December 15
GRE Policy: Not required / Waived
English Minimums: TOEFL iBT 100 minimum or IELTS 7.5 minimum
MA in Climate and Society (Columbia Climate School)
Partial Scholarships / Mostly Self-Funded (Target PhD)
Funding Reality: Climate School offers partial merit aid, but full funding is guaranteed on the PhD track.
Application Deadline: January 15
Admissions Advisory: If full funding is required and MS is self-funded, students are strongly advised to apply directly to the PhD track.
Vetted Matched Scholars (3 Profiles)
Prof. Pierre Gentine
Professor of Earth and Environmental Engineering; Director, NSF LEAP Center
In Plain Terms · What This Scholar Does:
He leads a $25-million NSF artificial intelligence center that replaces slow physics formulas with deep learning neural networks to predict global water cycles, droughts, and storms faster than ever before.
Core Research Topics: GeoAI, machine learning for Earth systems, land-atmosphere water interactions, satellite remote sensing, global drought and hydrological cycles.
Recent 2024–2026 Works & Grants: Director of the $25M NSF Science and Technology Center for Learning the Earth with Artificial Intelligence and Physics (LEAP). Published breakthrough 2026 work on neural network parameterizations for global climate and water cycle prediction, outperforming traditional physics models.
Laboratory Instruments & Methods: Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs), satellite Earth observation (SMAP, GRACE, Sentinel), eddy covariance flux networks, high-performance supercomputing, PyTorch.
Recruiting Context: Director of a major multi-million dollar NSF center. Massive funding capacity and high demand for students with GIS, remote sensing, and programming abilities.
Candidate Match:
GeoAIRemote SensingHydrologyGISPython
Tailored Cold-Email Opening Hook:
"Referencing his leadership of the NSF LEAP Center and recent 2026 work in AI-driven land-atmosphere water cycle parameterization, connecting it to your GIS, remote sensing, and Python background."
Prof. Marco Tedesco
Lamont Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
In Plain Terms · What This Scholar Does:
He uses orbital radar satellites to map melting glaciers and rushing meltwater rivers from space, calculating how fast melting ice will flood coastal cities around the world.
Core Research Topics: Satellite remote sensing of ice and surface water, cryospheric hydrology, climate change impacts, meltwater runoff modeling, sea-level rise.
Recent 2024–2026 Works & Grants: Directs the Cryospheric Processes and Remote Sensing Lab at LDEO. High-resolution satellite imagery (Sentinel, Landsat) and microwave radiometry tracking surface meltwater lakes, stream drainage on ice sheets, and global sea-level contributions.
Laboratory Instruments & Methods: Microwave and optical satellite remote sensing, airborne LiDAR, regional climate and snowpack models (MAR), Google Earth Engine, Python.
Recruiting Context: Actively directs NASA and NSF funded projects in polar and alpine remote sensing.
Candidate Match:
Remote SensingGISHydrologyPython
Tailored Cold-Email Opening Hook:
"Discussing satellite Earth observation of surface meltwater dynamics and remote sensing image processing applied to changing hydrological landscapes."
Prof. Beizhan Yan
Lamont Research Professor, Environmental Geochemistry
In Plain Terms · What This Scholar Does:
He invented a laser microscope technique that made global headlines by revealing that a single bottle of water contains hundreds of thousands of toxic invisible plastic particles.
Core Research Topics: Environmental organic geochemistry, microplastics and nanoplastics in drinking water, organic pollutants, analytical wet-lab spectrometry testing.
Recent 2024–2026 Works & Grants: Co-authored world-famous 2024–2025 studies utilizing stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy to discover hundreds of thousands of invisible nanoplastic particles in bottled drinking water, tracking chemical pollutants through urban waterways.
Laboratory Instruments & Methods: Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) microscopy, Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), analytical chemical extraction, wet-lab water filtration and spectrometry.
Recruiting Context: Runs an active analytical wet-lab at Lamont-Doherty. Exceptional match for candidates with water pollution testing and chemical spectrometry experience.
Candidate Match:
Environmental PollutionLab Water TestingWater QualityEnvironmental Science
Tailored Cold-Email Opening Hook:
"Highlighting your hands-on laboratory experience in water pollutant testing and chemical spectrometry, citing his groundbreaking work on nanoplastic and chemical contaminant detection in water."