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.

Once again, this section probably shouldn't be titled "news" with only one update per year. But again there's a long list of activities and accomplishments to discuss, so here goes!

• Erik Nielsen successfully defended his PhD dissertation and graduated in spring 2019! Erik will continue his research on extreme rainfall as a postdoctoral researcher here at CSU.
• Faith Groff successfully defended her MS thesis on convectively generated gravity waves in October 2019. Congratulations, Faith!
• Two new graduate students, Allie Mazurek and Jacob Escobedo, joined the research group in August 2019. We're happy to have you on the team!
• A new postdoctoral researcher, Aaron Hill, also joined the group in July 2019. Aaron received his PhD from Texas Tech University, where he studied ensemble forecasts of convective storms. Welcome, Aaron!
• Graduate student Faith Groff won two awards for her presentations at the CSU Graduate Student Showcase and the AMS Conference on Mesoscale Processes.
• Faith Groff and Sam Childs were student participants in, and Russ Schumacher co-organized, a summer colloquium at NCAR on quantifying and communicating uncertainty in high-impact weather prediction.
• Our research group traveled to Argentina to collect data during the RELAMPAGO field campaign -- a unique and memorable experience! Some of our experiences were highlighted in this article from the Verge, and in several educational videos about the project.
• As Colorado state climatologist, Russ Schumacher led the effort to establish three new state records during 2019, for hail size, maximum temperature, and lowest pressure.
• Yi Li, a scientist at the Jiangsu Institute of Meteorological Sciences in China, is visiting our group to conduct collaborative research during 2019. Welcome, Yi!

Our group has been so busy, it's been over a year since these news items have been updated! What have we been up to over the last year?

• Two new graduate students, Eric James and Jeremiah Piersante, joined the research group in August 2018. Welcome to both of you!
• Stacey Hitchcock and Greg Herman both successfully defended their PhD dissertations in October 2018!
• Sam Childs received the department's Herbert Riehl award for outstanding paper resulting from an MS thesis. Congrats, Sam!
• Nathan Kelly successfully defended his MS thesis in March 2018. He plans to continue into the PhD program.
• Numerous new papers, including several student-led articles, were accepted for publication and are shown on the updated publications page.
• Stacey Hitchcock and Erik Nielsen won awards for their presentations at American Meteorological Society meetings in 2018.
• Members of our group led the forecasting activities for the Western Wildfire Experiment for Cloud Chemistry, Aerosol Absorption, and Nitrogen (WE-CAN) in the summer of 2018.
• Our group is gearing up for the RELAMPAGO field campaign in Argentina in November-December 2018, to study some of the most intense storms on the planet.
• Russ Schumacher gave a series of presentations on extreme precipitation at two international seminars in 2018, one in Japan and one at the European Severe Storms Laboratory in Austria.
• He has also given a wide variety of presentations to many audiences in his role as Colorado's state climatologist: see the Colorado Climate Center website for updates on many of these activities.
• Several members of our group were part of CSU's national champion forecasting team in the WxChallenge.

Russ Schumacher was appointed as director of the Colorado Climate Center and Colorado's new state climatologist. He will continue his position as a faculty member while also taking on this new role. He was featured in CSU's SOURCE news.

Liu Zhang, a PhD student at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, will be visiting our research group from 2017-2019 under a China Scholarship Council award. Welcome, Liu!

Faith Groff, who recently graduated from Indiana University in atmospheric science, joined the research group as an M.S. student. Welcome, Faith!

PhD student Stacey Hitchcock earned the 2nd place student poster award for her presentation at the recent AMS 17th Conference on Mesoscale Processes in San Diego. Congrats, Stacey!

PhD student Greg Herman's research to develop a method for improving heavy rainfall and flood forecasts was highlighted on 9News. See his interview here!

Russ Schumacher's review article on heavy rainfall and flash flooding was published in the Oxford Encylopedia of Natural Hazards Science. Read and download it here.