Cameron Kleinkort, a Colorado State graduate student studying electrical engineering, received the Spiros G. Geotis Student Prize at the 37th American Meteorological Society Conference on Radar Meteorology held in Norman, Oklahoma last month.
Kleinkort was only the ninth student ever to receive the prize, which was first awarded in 1996 to another Colorado State University student, Lawrence Carey (M.S. ‘94, Ph.D. ’99, atmospheric science).
Kleinkort was honored for his paper and presentation titled “3D Shape Reconstruction of Snowflakes from Multiple Images, Meshing, Dielectric Constant Estimation, Scattering Analysis, and Validation by Radar Measurements.” (Cameron Kleinkort, Gwo-Jong Huang, Sanja Manić, Ana Manić, Patrick Kennedy, John Hubbert, Andrew Newman, V. N. Bringi, Branislav Notaroš). Kleinkort’s advisor is Professor Branislav Notaros in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Kleinkort’s goal is to improve radar-based snowflake classification and prediction of hazardous events. He uses a multi-angle snowflake camera that simultaneously captures five high-resolution views of each flake to help him reconstruct three-dimensional images. He performs electromagnetic scattering analysis on these reconstructions, and this simulated data is then compared with actual radar data from the CSU-CHILL National Weather Radar Facility.
It was Kleinkort’s first-ever American Meteorological Society conference or radar conference. “I was very surprised and honored to receive this award. It has motivated me to continue to work hard even when my research gets ‘flakey’ and I seem to be lost in ‘whiteout’ conditions.”
The Spiros G. Geotis Student Prize is awarded for the best student paper presented at each technical conference on radar meteorology. The prize was established to recognize Spiros G. Geotis’ lifelong contributions to radar meteorology and the encouragement he gave to many young researchers.
