Meet IonE Postdoctoral Fellow Apoorva Joshi
Over the summer, we published a feature story on the Institute on the Environment’s Postdoctoral Fellowship program, showcasing our vision to reimagine the postdoctoral experience for early-career scientists and researchers. Over the coming months, we’ll be profiling the original postdocs who inspired this initiative. This week we’re featuring Apoorva Joshi, PhD, a current postdoctoral fellow, pictured above.
Read the first article in the series.
Science has the power to shape a more sustainable future, especially when its insights can be readily understood and implemented by decision-makers. However, when complex data remains locked away in technical reports and inaccessible formats, its potential impact stalls. Experts like Apoorva Joshi help bridge this gap.
Joshi is a communication, decision, and behavioral scientist who joined the Institute on the Environment in November 2022. Fueled by turning science into solutions and meaningful change, Joshi uses her expertise to make scientific and environmental data accessible and actionable.
This approach is evident in Joshi’s work with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in which she uses science to improve the usability and interpretation of decision support forecast tools. Through her primary project, she leads the diagnosis, assessment, redesign, and testing of the NOAA Climate Prediction Center’s monthly drought outlook visualizations.
“We’re integrating best practices and latest research from a variety of different fields and casting a really wide disciplinary net to identify how research can help us modify and re-design these graphics,” Joshi says.
Before pursuing her PhD at Michigan State University, Joshi gained early experience in science communication as a journalist, working as a web producer for a CBS affiliate in Bozeman, Montana, and writing international environmental and science stories for Mongabay.com. This background now enriches her current work, says Melissa Kenney, Joshi’s mentor and IonE director of research.
“Apoorva brings a unique blend of a journalism background and science communication knowledge to her work,” Kenney explains.
Throughout her fellowship, she’s applied theory to create recommendations that have significantly improved the data products and visualizations released by federal agencies.
Joshi is also a collaborator on projects working with NOAA’s Office of Water Prediction to improve nationally important hydrological data visualization products to allow for better decision-making among users. Much of her role involves actively working with scientists and practitioners to identify their goals, intended audiences, and key messages.
“Apoorva’s ability to draw from various fields and apply that knowledge to make graphics more accessible is rare and invaluable,” Kenney says, emphasizing Joshi’s interdisciplinary approach. “Her work has had a tangible impact on how these tools are developed and used.”
For Joshi, the ability to see her work translate into real-world solutions has been a key highlight of her fellowship. She notes that seeing NOAA change the homepage of its flagship new water prediction forecasting product based on her team’s science-based collaborative recommendations, and leading work that has demonstrably and significantly improved drought forecast visualizations, has been “incredibly gratifying.”
Joshi shares that the IonE Postdoctoral Fellowship program has been pivotal in shaping her trajectory. “This experience helped cement my future career goals,” she says. “I’m more certain now than ever before that I want to work in applied research – in a role that has impact – because I’ve seen it’s possible.”
