2023 Student Award Winners
Bjerknes Award
Bosart Award
Turco Fellowship
Neiburger Winners
Jacob A. Bjerknes Award
This award recognizes outstanding achievements in research by graduate students in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. Students are eligible for this award in the year after they have delivered an AOS 270 graded seminar to the department, a required component of the AOS PhD program. Candidates are nominated by their faculty mentors, and are evaluated on the strengths of their scientific achievements over the course of their PhD. These achievements include scientific publications and presentations, impact in their scientific field, awards and other forms of recognition, and service to the scientific community.
This award was established in 1980 by a donation from the family of Jacob Bjerknes. Bjerknes co-founded the Department of Meteorology (now the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences) at UCLA in 1941, and is perhaps best known for his identification of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, which strongly influences climate variability in Southern California and various other parts of the world.
Past winners include:
2008 — Qing Yue and Shasha Zou
2009 — Wen Li
2010 — Lunjin Chen and Junhong Liang
2011 — Malamati Gkioulidou, Sarah B. Kapnick, and Dmitriy Subbotin
2012 — Hwa Jin Kim and Peng Wang
2013 — Thomas Weber
2014 — Yizhe (Peggy) Bu
2015 — Mei Gao and Ying Zou
2016 — Cenlin He
2017 — Kathleen Anne Schiro and Wu Sun
2018 — Daniel Dauhajre, Yi Hung Kuo, and Dilhara Ranasinghe
2019 — David H. Gonzalez and Aviv Solodoch
2020 — Tomas Chor and Ken Zhao
2021 — Katie Tuite and Yue Huang
2022 — Todd Emmenegger and Jordyn Moscoso
2023 — Yidongfang Si, Danny Leung, and Jiaqi Shen
Morris Neiburger Award
This award recognizes outstanding contributions to teaching by graduate students in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. Students are eligible for the award if they have served as teaching assistants for AOS in the preceding academic year. Candidates are asked to nominate themselves for the award, highlighting their achievements in and contributions to teaching at UCLA. Candidates are evaluated on the basis of the quality and quantity of their teaching, in addition to other indications of excellence, such as the incorporation of evidence-based teaching methods.
This award was established in 1986 by a donation from the family of Morris Neiburger. Neiburger was also a founding member of the Department of Meteorology (now the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences) at UCLA. He was an atmospheric scientist who specialized in air pollution, and was an outspoken advocate of measures to improve air quality in Los Angeles.
Past winners include:
2008 — Michael Young
2009 — Kathryn Shontz
2010 — Huihui Yuan
2011 — Tersi Arias and Travis Wilson
2012 — Marshal Abramczyk
2013 — Seth Saslo and Kathleen Schiro
2014 — Neil Berg, Daniel Russell, and Baird Langenbrunner
2015 — Beatriz Gallardo and Marla Schwartz
2016 — David H. Gonzalez
2017 — Sydnie Lemieux and Francis A. Turney
2018 — Kenyon Chow
2019 — Min (Danny) Leung
2020 — Daniel McCoy
2021 — Paige Hoel
2022 — Daniel Clements
2023 — Surabji Biyani, Marco Sandoval Belmar, and Dominique Stumbaugh
Brian Lance Bosart Award
This award was established in 2000 to honor the memory of Brian Lance Bosart, who was a graduate student in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. The award honors a UCLA student for academic achievement and for typifying Brian Bosart’s ideals that a good scientist must also be someone who demonstrates caring and commitment to the wider university, departmental, and local communities. All current AOS graduate students are eligible for the award. The award is voted on by the Bosart Award Committee, composed of faculty and previous awardees, based on nominations from current graduate students.
Past winners include:
2008 — Calvin Liang and Aloisia Nuijens
2009 — Gregory Derevianko
2010 — Sarah B. Kapnick
2011 — Aaron Ferrel
2012 — Baird Langenbrunner
2013 — Kathleen Schiro
2014 — Daniel Dauhajre
2015 — Maria A. Schwartz
2016 — Beatriz Gallardo and Dilhara Ranasinghe
2017 — David H. Gonzalez
2018 — Jordyn Moscoso
2019 — Zoe Pierrat
2020 — Ken Zhao
2021 — Laura Thapa and Sarah Worden
2022 — Catherine Banach and Sara Graves
2023 — Dominique Stumbaugh and Surabhi Biyani
Paul M. Furukawa Memorial Fellowship
This fellowship supports an outstanding AOS graduate student that is in their first or second year of the PhD program, as selected by the Chair of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. The fellowship was established in 2015 by a donation from Mrs. Chiyoko Furukawa, the wife of Paul M. Furukawa. Dr. Paul M. Furukawa received two meteorology degrees from AOS: a BA in 1955, and an MA in 1960. He subsequently worked on a wide variety of atmospheric science research projects, first at the Stanford Research Institute and then later for the United States Air Force, from which he retired as a Colonel in 1991.
2018 — Hung-I Lee
2019 — Sarah Johnson
2020 — Sara Graves
2021 — Isaiah Cuadras
2022 — Xiuyuan Ding
Richard P. and Linda S. Turco Awards
The following awards were established via donations from Richard P. and Linda S. Turco. Richard Turco joined the AOS faculty in 1988, and conducted broad-ranging research on environmental issues such as ozone depletion, air pollution, and the climatic impacts of aerosols. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, of which AOS is a member.
Richard P. and Linda S. Turco Exceptional Research Paper Award
This award recognizes outstanding scientific publications by students and postdoctoral researchers in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. Candidates are nominated via a letter from an AOS faculty member or researcher, accompanied by a supporting letter from another scientist that is familiar with the published work. Candidates are evaluated on the basis of their study’s potential for impact in their field, the comprehensiveness of their methodology/analysis, the clarity of their presentation, their leadership of the study, and the strengths of their nomination and supporting letters.
Past winners include:
2018 — Katie Tuite for her publication “Iodine catalyzed ozone destruction at the Texas coast and Gulf of Mexico” in Geophysical Research Letters, and Fiaz Ahmed for his publiction “Reverse engineering the tropical precipitation-buoyancy relationship” in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
2019 — Xin An for his publication on the unified view of nonlinear wave structures associated with whistler-mode chorus.
Tomas Chor for his publication on a turbulence velocity scale for predicting the fate of buoyant materials in the oceanic mixed layer.
Ken Zhao for a rigorous and detailed exploration of the dynamics of ocean circulation within ice shelf cavities.
2020 — Adeyemi Adebiyi for his publication, “Climate models miss most of the coarse dust in the atmosphere”: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz9507
2021 — Gavin Madakumbura for his publication, “Anthropogenic influence on extreme precipitation over global land areas seen in multiple observational datasets.”
2022 — Yizhou Zhuang for his publication, “Quantifying Contributions of Natural Variability and Anthropogenic Forcings on Increased Fire Weather Risk Over Western Unites States”
2023 — Rodrigo Rodakoviski
Richard P. and Linda S. Turco Endowed Graduate Fellowship
This fellowship is typically awarded to two students each year, in recognition of exceptional progress and promise in a program of doctoral research and coursework in the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. Candidates include all departmental graduate students entering their third year of the PhD program, or entering their fourth year in exceptional cases. To be considered for the award, candidates must be nominated by an AOS faculty member or researcher. Candidates are evaluated on the basis of timely completion of, and excellent performance in, the academic work required for the PhD; outstanding results in their PhD coursework; additional indicators of exceptional achievement in their scientific endeavors; and their potential to become a leading scientist or educator.
Past winners include:
2020 — Danny Leung and Gavin Madakumbura
2021 — Laura Thapa
2022 — Sarah Worden and Ning Kang
2023 — Alex Chang and Garrett Finucane