News and Events

Join us in congratulating our faculty on their promotions!   Melissa Gervais - Associate Professor, Matt Kumjian - Professor, Ying Pan - Associate Professor, Colin Zarzycki - Associate Professor, Rob Lydick - Assistant Teaching Professor, Art Person - Associate Research Professor, and Steve Seman - Associate Teaching Professor

Researchers at Penn State are part of a multi-university team selected to receive $6.6 million in recommended funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The group will establish a new multi-university data assimilation consortium to improve weather forecasts using enhanced numerical weather prediction systems.

Mane Khachatryan, a second-year biology major at Penn State Harrisburg, said she didn’t really get to delve into science until she came to college. So when she heard about EnvironMentors — a program that helps expose high school students to STEM — she jumped at the chance to help younger students explore the field. “I wish I had opportunities like this in high school,” she said.

Penn State researchers were recently awarded funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation to develop a new coupled watershed-estuary model that simulates the transport and fate of major salt ions. 

In 2020, a line of severe thunderstorms unleashed powerful winds that caused billions in damages across the Midwest United States. A technique developed by Penn State scientists that incorporates satellite data could improve forecasts — including where the most powerful winds will occur — for similar severe weather events.

David Stensrud, professor of meteorology, has been voted president-elect of the American Meteorological Society and was inducted on, Jan. 28, during the 104th AMS Annual Meeting.

Jose D. Fuentes, professor of atmospheric science in Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, will receive a pair of honors in December at the 2023 American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting.

Fuentes has been elected as an AGU Fellow, joining 63 other scientists from around the world in the 2023 class. He will also receive the organization’s Ambassador Award at the meeting in San Francisco.  

Martha Christino, class of 2023, was selected for the Young Alumni Ambassador program is a yearlong experience that enhances the connections between young alumni, the Penn State Alumni Association, and the University, She is a now doctoral student at the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School, focusing on combining climate and energy models to advance sustainable systems through low-impact energy technologies for a sustainable and equitable world. 

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently honored Penn State's weather data center — now housed next to the Walker Building, which is home to the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science — as a 100-year weather/climate monitoring site. Penn State has gathered data since 1882, but WMO only recently began awarding the 100-year distinction.

MEMS was founded in 2019 to promote diversity within the College of Earth and Mineral Science by Bryttani Wooten, then an undergraduate student in meteorology and atmospheric science. Wooten graduated in 2021 and is now a doctoral student in geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.