A few months ago, Major League Baseball hosted its 94th All-Star Game at the home of the Texas Rangers. Thirty-two of baseball’s best—who have spent a lifetime mastering their craft—took the field, doing what few can: catching and, ideally, hitting a small sphere traveling at about 100 miles per hour with a 42-inch long, 2.64-inch diameter cylinder.
Just as baseball has its legends, the Department of Energy (DOE) celebrates its own emerging “All-Stars”—early career scientists who have dedicated their lives to discovery. This year, DOE recognized such individuals, each playing a pivotal role in game-changing science. And much like selections for the All-Star Game, many were worthy, but just 62 could be funded with an Early Career Research Award.
Among those honored, three wear “ASR” on their uniforms. These scientists will tackle difficult challenges: Advancing the process-level understanding of the key interactions among aerosols, clouds, precipitation, radiation, dynamics, and thermodynamics, with the ultimate goal of reducing the uncertainty in global and regional earth system models.
We extend our congratulations to ASR’s 2024 Early Career All-Stars: Nathaniel Chaney (Duke University), Gavin Cornwell (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), and Sara Shamekh (New York University). I encourage you to explore their stories in this edition.
An Investigator of Deep Convection
This month, we shine a spotlight on another ASR standout, Fiaz Ahmed. At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Fiaz leads a team focused on understanding deep convection in tropical regions. Their cutting-edge tools promise new insights into storm cloud dynamics—and much, much more.
New Campaigns and Alabama Measurements
We also introduce BEACONS, a novel ASR initiative that will deploy autonomous systems on commercial ships to routinely observe aerosol and cloud properties at sea. This project builds on the findings from the March 2024 Workshop on Observing Marine Aerosols and Clouds from Ships.
And if that wasn’t enough, don’t miss our highlights on ASR research and ARM’s foray into Arizona observations.
Finally, we are excited to announce that on October 1, ARM’s Bankhead National Forest (BNF) atmospheric observatory will begin gathering data for the scientific community. Observations here will be a focus of several ASR-supported projects. Learn more about the BNF deployment and how to incorporate BNF data into your research.
As always, my co-program manager, Shaima Nasiri, and I welcome your questions and feedback. Please reach out to us at any time.
# # #Author: Jeff Stehr, ASR Program Manager, U.S. Department of Energy
This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, through the Biological and Environmental Research program as part of the Atmospheric System Research program.