News
Awards, new papers, and life in the lab.
César awarded the AGU Macelwane Medal and elected an AGU Fellow
César Terrer has been awarded the James B. Macelwane Medal by the American Geophysical Union, and with it elected to the AGU College of Fellows. The medal goes each year to no more than five scientists across the whole of AGU, from every discipline it covers, and only to researchers within ten years of their PhD. He is one of five named for 2026. He also receives AGU’s Global Environmental Change Early Career Award, the leading early-career recognition in his own field. Both will be presented at the AGU Annual Meeting in San Francisco, 7–11 December 2026.
Welcome Duncan
Duncan Jurayj has joined the lab as a PhD student. He will use remote sensing and field observations to study wind disturbances in Amazonian forests and what they mean for the tropical carbon cycle. Duncan comes to MIT from the University of Michigan, where he worked on LiDAR and microwave remote sensing retrievals of vegetation structure and water storage, and holds an A.B. in Geology-Biology from Brown University.
Farewell to Sara, Diego and Shuai
Sara Cerasoli, Diego Grados and Shuai Ren are moving on from the lab. We got together for a farewell dinner to send them off. Thank you all three for the science, the ideas and the company — you will be missed.
Ruofei receives the Martin Fellowship
Ruofei Jia has been awarded a Martin Fellowship for the 2026–2027 academic year, recognising graduate research on sustainability.
Welcome to our new website
We have just launched a new Terrer Lab website. We are starting the News section fresh here, so earlier lab news has not been carried over from the previous site — this is where we will post new papers, awards and lab updates from now on.
César named a Highly Cited Researcher
César Terrer has been named to Clarivate’s 2025 Highly Cited Researchers list, which recognises researchers whose papers rank in the top 1% by citations for their field and year of publication. Roughly 1 in 1,000 scientists worldwide are included.
César promoted to Associate Professor
César Terrer has been promoted to Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, effective July 1, 2025.
César receives an NSF CAREER Award
César Terrer has received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, its most prestigious honour for junior faculty. The five-year grant supports research on how much soil carbon has been lost through ecosystem degradation, and whether any of it can be recovered.