Brendan Eckerman joined the group as a M.S. student in fall 2025. He currently works as a meteorologist for the Colorado Department of Transportation, and will be pursuing research on winter weather in Colorado and its influence on hazardous road conditions. Welcome, Brendan!

Casey Zoellick successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "Improving Predictions and Generating Actionable Forecast Insights for Downslope Windstorms with Machine Learning". Congratulations, Casey!

Two students were honored for their outstanding presentations at the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Ph.D. student Jacob Escobedo received an honorable mention student paper award at the 24th Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Environmental Science, and Anastasia Tomanek received a poster presentation award at the AMS Student Conference. Congrats, Jacob and Anastasia!

Allie Mazurek successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation! Allie will be starting a position at the Colorado Climate Center in January 2025. Congrats, Allie!

We welcomed several new students in the fall 2024 semester! M.S. students Evan Cowden, Joseph Dale, Caleb Steele, and Anastasia Tomanek joined the department and our research group as M.S. students. Read more about them here. Welcome aboard!

Ph.D. student Allie Mazurek continued to be honored for her ground-breaking research that involves using "explainable AI" to understand how machine-learning models for hazardous weather make their predictions. She won two outstanding student presentation awards at the AMS annual meeting in January, and was honored with the department's Maria Silva Dias award in May for the outstanding submitted paper by a Ph.D. student. Congratulations, Allie!

Allie Mazurek was honored with the Shrake-Culler Scholarship which is awarded to a senior Ph.D. student who "has demonstrated a strong work ethic and enthusiasm for higher education." Here is the summary from the department website. Congrats, Allie on this well-deserved award!

Eric James successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation! Eric will continue working in research and model development for NOAA's Global Systems Lab in Boulder. Congrats, Eric!

Some long-overdue research group updates:

• Nathan Kelly successfully completed his Ph.D. in spring 2023. He is now working as a meteorologist and developer for DTN. Congrats, Nathan!
• The Colorado State University-Machine Learning Probabilities (CSU-MLP) foreacst system developed by our research group was highlighted in CSU Source and in a feature report on AI research at CSU.
• Ph.D. student Allie Mazurek earned an outstanding student presentation award at the American Meteorological Society 32nd Conference on Weather Analysis and Forecasting in July 2023, for her presentation "Making Sense of Random Forest-Based Severe Weather Forecasts Using Tree Interpreter". Congrats, Allie!
• Aaron Hill, who as a research scientist led the development of the CSU-MLP system over the last few years, accepted an offer as assistant professor in the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. Aaron has been a vital member of the research group and will be missed, and we look forward to seeing what he accomplishes as a faculty member at OU.
• Former Ph.D. student Stacey Hitchcock also began a faculty appointment at the University of Oklahoma in fall 2023. Congrats to Stacey!
• Several new papers were published, all of which can be found on the publications page.

If you're attending the American Meteorological Society annual meeting in Denver or online, our group has several presentations about our work. Click here for a summary of these talks and posters, and please stop by!

Our group has numerous presentations at the virtual American Meteorological Society annual meeting. Click here for a summary of these talks and posters. If you're attending AMS, please check them out!

Some updates from the fall semester in 2021:

• We welcomed three new graduate students to the group in fall 2021, Ph.D. students Jon Thielen and Casey Zoellick, and M.S. student Ayesha Wilkinson. It's great to have all of you on board!
• In July, Aaron Hill was promoted to Research Scientist I after the conclusion of his postdoctoral appointment. Congratulations, Aaron!
• Former Ph.D. student and postdoctoral researcher Sam Childs started a new position as a research meteorologist with the U.S. Air Force. Sam was also selected for the American Association of State Climatologists 2021 New Scientist Award!
• Allie Mazurek received an Outstanding Student Poster Award for her presentation on extreme rainfall during Tropical Storm Imelda at the 2020 AGU Fall Meeting. Congrats, Allie!
• Our work to transition the CSU-Machine Learning Probabilities forecast guidance into operational use at the Weather Prediction Center was highlighted in CSU's Source.
• Several new papers were published, on topics including convection in South America from the RELAMPAGO field campaign, results from the CSU-MLP forecast system, a destructive downburst in eastern Colorado, and gravity waves in MCSs. Check them out on the publications page!

Another very long-overdue update to the website: here are many of the things that have been going on in the last year!

• Sam Childs successfully completed his PhD in summer 2020. He published two papers in 2020 resulting from his PhD research on severe weather risk in eastern Colorado. Sam is continuing in our research group as a postdoctoral researcher, while also working part-time as a researcher for NCAR.
• Former PhD student and postdoctoral researcher Erik Nielsen started a new position as an Instructional Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University. Congratulations, Erik!
• Former MS student Faith Groff joined CPP Wind as an atmospheric scientist. Congratulations, Faith!
• Postdoctoral researcher Aaron Hill gave a high-profile invited presentation at the National Weather Association annual meeting on our group’s machine-learning forecasting work.
• Graduate student Jeremiah Piersante, who was co-advised by Russ Schumacher and Kristen Rasmussen, successfully defended his MS thesis on convective storm environments in South America. Jeremiah has entered the PhD program at the University at Albany. Congratulations, Jeremiah!
• Russ Schumacher and Kristen Rasmussen published an invited review article on mesoscale convective systems in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment; the paper can be accessed here.
• In his role as Colorado State Climatologist, Russ Schumacher was widely interviewed and quoted in relation to Colorado’s drought and record wildfire season in 2020 (including this KUNC interview and this Denver Post article.)
• Russ Schumacher was honored by the American Meteorological Society with the Clarence Leroy Meisinger Award, “For fundamental advances in our understanding of flash-flood-producing storms and other mesoscale weather phenomena through innovative analyses of observations and model simulations”.
• Members of our research group have published numerous papers in the last year; a complete list can be found at http://schumacher.atmos.colostate.edu/research/allpubs.php.