Dr Ailie Gallant is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment in the Faculty of Science.

Dr Gallant's research focuses on drought, and precipitation variability and extremes.

Her research interests include:

• Examining how rain-baring precipitation systems change during drought, including the role of extreme precipitation in drought development and recovery.
• Exploring how climate models simulate drought, including those synoptic-scale processes important for drought development.
• Identifying and understanding flash drought (rapid-onset drought)
• Exploring how and why drought might change with climate change, and realising the limitations that climate models have in their representation of drought-related processes on the synoptic scale.
• Interpreting variability in the pre-instrumental climate using palaeoclimate data, and determining dynamical explanations for past climate variability, with a focus on the last 2000 years.

Dr Gallant is also a passionate climate science educator and communicator. You can follow her on Twitter @safaripenguin

Ailie completed her PhD at Monash University in 2009 in the School of Mathematical Sciences. Her dissertation, titled 'Trends in extremes of the Australian climate', was supervised by Prof. Michael Reeder, Mr. Kevin Hennessy (CSIRO) and Dr. James Risbey (CSIRO). Prior education includes an Honours degree (1st class) and Bachelor of Science at Monash University, which included a one-year exchange at the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma (2002/03).

Following the completion of her PhD, Ailie completed two postdocs at the University of Melbourne, Australia and at the University of Washington, USA where she worked on problems associated with climate variability and change in the Southern Hemisphere. Her current research interests include identifying and understanding variations and trends in Australian climate extremes; investigating the role of multi-decadal scale climate variability in the Australian region; and characterising pre-instrumental climate variations in Australia and Antarctica using palaeoclimate data.