Five students in Colorado State University’s Department of Atmospheric Science have received 2015 American Meteorological Society Graduate Fellowships. The CSU students were awarded five of nine total nationwide fellowships.

Fellowship recipients are selected for academic excellence, community involvement, volunteer efforts and future career plans in the sciences.

“The department is extremely proud of the accomplishments of these five individuals and of all of our graduate students,” said Jeff Collett, department head. “The fact that five of nine national AMS Graduate Fellowship winners this year are attending CSU clearly attests to the outstanding students that choose CSU for their graduate studies.”

Collett continued: “In addition to these AMS Fellowships, many of our new and continuing students have also been recognized with graduate fellowships from a variety of sponsors, including nine recipients of highly prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships. Such exceptional students are key contributors to our program’s success and international reputation.”

Supporting first-year grad students

The AMS graduate fellowship program, supported by industry and government agencies,  recruits young people entering their first year of graduate study from a wide range of interests: meteorology, physics, mathematics, hydrology, oceanography, marine science, computer science and engineering.

The program supports outstanding young scientists entering the fields of atmospheric, oceanic and hydrologic sciences, and provides resources to allow them to pursue a full schedule of academic studies during their first year of graduate study. The fellowship includes a $25,000 stipend and travel support to attend the AMS Annual Meeting.

CSU’s graduate fellows

Samuel Childs: NOAA’S Climate Program Office Fellowship

Childs is interested in extreme weather and climate and societal impacts. His research, working with Assistant Professor Russ Schumacher, will focus on climate influences and mesoscale environments of cold-season tornadoes. He will analyze their geospatial shifts through time, as well as societal impacts of tornado events by improving outreach and communication strategies of their forecasts and risks.

Sean Freeman: NASA Earth Science Fellowship

Freeman will focus his research on mesoscale modeling, working with Professor Susan van den Heever. Freeman has been involved in research since high school, and also completed a college senior thesis investigating the transport of anthropogenic pollutants by Hurricane Sandy. He also participated in the NASA Student Airborne Research Program and returned to that program as its coding mentor, giving lectures and teaching programming.

Karly Reimel: Lockheed Martin Corporation Fellowship

Reimel’s research interests include lightning, severe weather, radar and satellite. Her graduate research will focus on the GOESR Geostationary Lightning Mapper that will be launched in spring of 2016. Advised by Professor Steven Rutledge and Senior Research Scientist Steven Miller, she will be merging real time lightning and satellite data to better predict different types of severe weather. Her goal is to assist in the development of algorithms for GOES-R that predict severe weather.

Jakob Lindaas: NOAA’S Climate Program Office Fellowship

Lindaas’ research interests are in atmospheric chemistry. His studies will focus on understanding how emissions from anthropogenic activities, such as oil and gas extraction or from biogenic events such as forest fires, affect air quality and climate on local to global scales. Lindaas, who is working with Assistant Professor Emily Fischer, aspires to work at the intersection of atmospheric science and the policy decisions that it can inform.

Rick Schulte: NASA Earth Science Fellowship

Schulte is interested in remote sensing and climate change. He will focus his graduate research on microphysical growth processes in clouds using airborne Doppler radar measurements. Advised by Professor Christian Kummerow, Schulte hopes this research will demonstrate the feasibility of using remote sensing to study cloud processes and lead to improvements in the way microphysical processes are accounted for cloud-resolving models.