Tiantian Yang
Associate Professor
School for Environment and Sustainability
Ph.D. Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine, 2015
M.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Irvine, 2011
B.S. Mechanical and Mechanics Engineering, 2009
- Physically-informed AI/ML modeling for flood forecasting
- AI-assisted reservoir system and water transferring project modeling
- Hydrology modeling and water resource planning under climate change and weather extremes
- Sustainable system planning, operation, and risk assessment of water infrastructure (rivers, streams, ponds, lakes, reservoirs, dams, and hydropower)
- Subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) and climate-scale hydroclimatological forecasting
- Natural hazard (flood, drought, wildfire etc,) risk management
- Water-energy-climate nexus, Climate-based Solutions, Nature-based Solutions
- Improving climate model projections of precipitation and temperature extremes
Dr. Tiantian Yang’s research lies at the intersection of hydrology, water resources engineering, water infrastructure systems, freshwater resource management and planning, weather extremes, climate change, subseasonal-to-seasonal forecasts, and their interconnected impacts on the sustainability and resilience of planning, operations, risk assessment, and management of surface water systems (e.g., rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, reservoirs, and dams), clean energy systems (e.g., hydropower) and agriculture.
Dr. Yang is also interested in how artificial intelligence, deep learning architectures, state space or Mamba models, and large language models (LLMs) can support hydrologic modeling, reservoir and hydropower system planning, and complex decision-making in water and energy nexus. His past and ongoing research further explores how these AI approaches can complement or even replace traditional physically based hydrologic and reservoir system simulation models. The applications of Dr. Yang’s AI research span from flood forecasting, extreme rainfall and hurricane prediction, disaster management and risk analysis for floods and droughts, regional and global weather anomaly forecasting, and improving climate model projections for precipitation and temperature.
Dr. Yang’s scientific contributions have been widely recognized through prestigious honors, including the NSF CAREER Award, the AGU Hydrology Section Early Career Award, and multiple institutional awards for research and educational innovation.