Rona Louise Thompson
Dr. Rona Thompson is a senior scientist at NILU, Kjeller, since 2011.
Dr. Thompson has a PhD in atmospheric chemistry from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Since completing her PhD, Thompson has been a post-doc at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, and at the Laboratory for Climate and Environmental Sciences in Saclay, France.
Dr Thompson’s main research interests are in understanding the sources and sinks of atmospheric pollutants, including greenhouse gases, and the processes driving these. For this, she employs atmospheric transport models and statistical methods.
Dr Thompson has a long experience working with, and developing, numerical models for atmospheric research. She is also the developer of the atmospheric inversion framework, FLEXINVERT.
Dr Thompson is actively involved in Norwegian and European research projects and is currently the coordinator of the Horizon Europe project, EYE-CLIMA. She is also the co-leader of the Global Carbon Project N2O Budget activity.
Kjetil Tørseth
Kjetil Tørseth received his Dr Scient degree at NTNU-Trondheim, and has worked at NILU since 1992.Since 1999 he has served as department head/research director.
His expertize includes measurements and data management and assessment of precipitation chemistry, reactive gases, aerosols and climate forcers, and their associated effects on ecosystems, health and climate.
He is engaged in a wide range of programs addressing assessments of air pollution on regional and global scales, including EMEP (head the EMEP Chemical Coordinating Centre), WMO Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW Country contact of Norway, member to the Scientific Advisory Group on Reactive Gases, responsible for the two GAW World Data Centers on Aerosols (GAW-WDCA) and Reactive Gases (GAW-WDCRG). He is also engaged in several research infrastructure activities like ICOS, ACTRIS and SIOS. He has a broad experience from many international research and capacity building projects.
Dam Thanh Vo
Dam Thanh Vo has worked as a scientist at NILU since 2007. He is focusing on Emission Inventory on regional and local scale; Spatial Data Analysis using ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Pro, ModelBuilder; Visualization of air quality dispersion modelling results – ESRI WebAppBuilder.
He has a Master in Environmental Geology and Geosciences from the University of Oslo, Norway, and is educated as an Geology and Environmental Engineer at the University of Technology, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Before 2007, Dam Thanh Vo held a position as Head of EQMA Division, Environmental Quality Monitoring and Assessment Division, Ho Chi Minh City Environmental Protection Agency (HEPA), the division manages the whole environmental quality monitoring system of Ho Chi Minh City include instrument maintenance and data management.
Ekaterina Vorobeva
Dr Ekaterina Vorobeva works as a postdoctoral researcher at NILU since January 2024. Her project is a part of the Copernicus Climate Change Service Evolution (CERISE) project that aims to enhance the quality of the C3S reanalysis and seasonal forecast portfolio. In her postdoctoral research, Ekaterina will analyze snow forecasts produced by several leading meteorological centers in Europe and discuss the role of snow in land-atmosphere coupling.
Ekaterina holds a PhD degree from the Norwegian university of science and technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. Her PhD project had a focus on utilizing ground-based observations of low-frequency sound waves (infrasound) to probe the dynamics of the middle atmosphere. A particular emphasis was put on studying gravity waves activity and the stratospheric polar vortex.
Ekaterina’s main research interests include but are not limited to (i) atmospheric dynamics and chemistry, (ii) middle atmosphere, (iii) remote sensing, (iv) atmospheric modelling.
Sam-Erik Walker
Sam-Erik Walker holds an M.Sc. in Statistics and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Oslo.
He has over 30 years of experience developing and applying air pollution dispersion models for cities and urban areas and analysing air quality data using various numerical and statistical tools and methods. These include deterministic and probabilistic methods for model evaluation and validation, data assimilation, ensemble modelling, and data fusion to combine air quality observations with model results. He is one of the principal authors of several of the present models at NILU, including the urban air pollution dispersion model EPISODE.
He is also the leading developer behind the AirGAM trend and prediction model at NILU. This model enables the estimation of meteorology-adjusted long-term trends of air pollutants such as NO2, O3, PM, and VOCs at air quality stations in Norway and Europe. It has been used to quantify the effects of lockdowns during the recent COVID-19 pandemic and for estimating long-term trends for all EEA stations in Europe.
Recently, he developed the AirRisk model, a risk assessment model to quantify the risk or probability of exceeding limit values of NO2 and PM in connection with recent assessment studies in various Norwegian cities and urban areas, including Lørenskog, Drammen, and Oslo.
He actively disseminates scientific knowledge by writing reports and papers and regularly participates in scientific conferences. His primary motivation for working at NILU is to contribute to a cleaner world.
Thomas Walmsley
Thomas Walmsley works as an engineer at the department of monitoring and instrument technology. He has a master’s degree in Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology (MSENVITOX) from NTNU where he in his thesis «Studies of environmental footprint in Brøggerdalen after rocket launching in Ny-Ålesund» did sampling, acid digestion and chemical analysis of trace elements and PCBs in sediment.
He is a part of the group that works on the Medusa GC-MS. He is also responsible for running the EC /OC where he analyses carbonaceous aerosols as a part of the monitoring projects as well as other projects on demand.