Summary
Maria Pyrina has a scientific background in physics, atmospheric sciences, and statistics. She has contributed to the Destination Earth initiative at ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts), focusing on process-based verification of surface variables in kilometre-scale global forecasts, including both numerical weather prediction (NWP) and AI-driven models. During her postdoctoral career at ETH Zurich and C2SM Zurich, she investigated remote drivers of extreme temperature and drought events, assessed deterministic and ensemble forecast skill, and developed AI algorithms for subseasonal to seasonal weather and climate prediction, as well as for forecast downscaling over Switzerland. She also contributed to the transdisciplinary project HEATaware (University of Lausanne) on predicting heat-related mortality by coupling a statistical temperature-mortality model to NWP extended-range temperature forecasts. Her PhD research centered on the application of statistical methods to reconstruct paleoclimate conditions over the last millennium, alongside evaluations of CMIP simulations and paleoclimate models. Currently she is employed by the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine as a Data manager, applying data quality assurance and preprocessing techniques to transform unstructured health data into analysis-ready datasets.
Professional interests
- Impact-based forecasting, including subseasonal prediction of climate-related risks (e.g., heat-related mortality) for early warning applications
- Development of statistical and AI-based weather and climate forecasts
- Forecast verification and diagnostics for NWP and AI forecasts
- Atmospheric Predictability for short-range, medium-range, and subseasonal predictions
- Extreme events (e.g., heatwaves, droughts) verification in km-scale global forecasts
Career background
March 2026 – present:
Data manager at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM), group of Climate Epidemiology and Public Health
June 2024 – May 2026
Scientist at the Forecast and Services department at ECMWF
August 2023 – February 2024
Postdoctoral researcher at Unil, group of Atmospheric processes
February 2021 – July 2026
Postdoctoral researcher at IAC, ETH Zurich, group of Atmospheric predictability
August 2017 – December 2020
Postdoctoral researcher at Helmholtz-Zentrum HEREON, group of Climate Extremes and Impacts
April 2014 – July 2017
Early career scientist (Marie Curie Fellowship) at Helmholtz-Zentrum HEREON, group of Paleoclimate and Statistics
PhD student at the University of Hamburg, Department of Earth System Sciences
