Remi Tailleux

I have been a lecturer in the Meteorology department since August 2007, taking over from Prof. David Marshall after he left with his group to Oxford, and became Associate Professor in Physical Oceanography in August 2014. I initially joined the Meteorology Department in June 2005, however, to work with Jonathan Gregory as the project manager of the RAPID-funded project "Understanding uncertainty in simulations of THC-related rapid climate change''.
My interest in the field started when I joined the Laboratoire de Geochimie Isotopique (LGI) at the French atmomic center in Saclay to work as an intern with Jean Jouzel sometimes in 1988 on the problem of isotopic smoothing in ice cores, while an undergrad student at the French Engineer School Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees. I found scientific research so exciting that I continued coming to Saclay to work with Laurent Memery on the reduction of large marine datasets using the Singular Value Decomposition. One thing leading to another, Sylvie Joussaume offered me to do a PhD with her on a topic that was initially intended to be the modelling of the ocean circulation during the Last Glacial Maximum, but which ended up far away from the initial topic. The beginning of my PhD coincided with the rapid expansion of the small LGI laboratory into the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, with a move to the L'orme des Merisiers site, where it still is under the new name Laboratoire de Modelisation du Climate et de l'Environnement. I started my PhD after completing a year of compulsory military service in 1990/1991, during which I witnessed the start and rapid ending of the first Irak war from the safety of the Marine Headquarters in Paris. My PhD did not go all that well, but I nevertheless completed it after 4.5 years of intense labor, and defended it in February 1996. I then spent some time visiting the East coast of the USA, unsuccessfully trying get a postdoc with John Marshall at MIT in Boston. Coming from Paris, I had imagined that the only acceptable US cities for a European guy like me had to be on the East Coast, and was strongly prejudiced against the West Coast. But after luckily getting the chance to work as a postdoc from 1996 to 1996 with James C. McWilliams, I am still wondering today where I got this idea. Of course, California was wonderful (and probably still will be if they manage to get over the drought), and I am grateful to Jim for teaching me how to write a scientific paper and get it published! My fist three papers later, I then went on to work with Francois Lott on the parameterisation of internal gravity waves as part of the European project IGWOC for one year, and then with Jean-Yves Grandpeix on the parameterisation of deep cumulus convection as part of the European project EUROCS for two years, in both cases at the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique in Paris. I then left France again for South Africa this time, to work as a postdoc with Chris Reason at the Climate System Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town, from 2003 to 2005. Then Reading, where I have happily settled down for now.

Companies

• Associate Professor in Physical Oceanography University of Reading (2014)
• Lecturer University of Reading (2007 — 2014)
• Senior Project Manager University of Reading (2005 — 2007)
• Postdoctoral Researcher University of Cape Town (2003 — 2005)
• Postdoctoral Researcher Pierre and Marie Curie University (1999 — 2003)
• Postdoctoral Researcher University of California, Los Angeles (1996 — 1999)