Two new staff members have joined the ICTP's Physics of Weather and Climate Group. German-born Fred Kucharski, a visiting scientist at ICTP for the past two years, previously held a post doc at Reading University's Meteorological Department, UK, and served as a staff member of the Meteorological Office in Bracknell, UK. His main area of research focusses on global climate variability in timescales ranging from months to decades-research that includes such phenomena as El Niño/Southern Oscillations (ENSO) and North Atlantic Oscillations (NAO). Kucharski earned his Ph.D. at the University of Frankfurt's Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics. Chinese-born Xunqiang Bi, who earned his Ph.D. at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) in Beijing, enjoyed a brief tenure as a visiting scientist at the State University of New York at Albany (USA) and worked at IAP's Laboratory of numerical modelling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical fluid dynamics (LASG). Since 1998, he has been a visiting scientist at ICTP, where his research has focussed on regional climate simulation in East Asia, Europe, and Africa.