Kotsuki Shunji

Dr. Shunji Kotsuki is an Associate Professor of Center for Environmental Remote Sensing (CEReS), Chiba University, and leading "Environmental Prediction Science". He received his B.S. (2009), M.S.(2011) and Ph. D. (2013) degrees in civil engineering from Kyoto University. He experienced his professional career as Post-doctoral Researcher (2014-2017), and Research Scientist (2017-2019) at RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS). He started leading his research group at CEReS, Chiba University since November, 2019.

Dr. Kotsuki is a leading scientist on data assimilation and numerical weather prediction with over 6 years of research experience in development of the global atmospheric data assimilation system (a.k.a. NICAM-LETKF). His research interests are in data assimilation mathematics, model parameter estimation, observation diagnosis including impact estimates, satellite data analysis, hydrological modeling, and atmospheric and hydrological disaster predictions. His techniques for an adaptive covariance inflation and assimilating observations with non-Gaussian errors have been incorporated in the RIKEN’s global atmospheric data assimilation system, and improved its weather forecasts significantly.

In 2017, Dr. Kotsuki was selected as an Excellent Young Researcher by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. He has been recognized by several prestigious awards such as the Thesis Award for Young Scientists from Japan Society of Hydrology and Water Resources Engineering (2013), and RIKEN Ohbu Research Incentive Award (2019). He is also the PRESTO researcher of JST, and visiting scientist of R-CCS, and exploring data-driven approaches for the environmental prediction science.