Citation for Kenneth Carslaw
We congratulate Dr. Kenneth Carslaw, winner of a 2014 Ascent Award “for outstanding contributions to the modeling of aerosol properties and their impact on climate in the troposphere and lower stratosphere.”
—Peter Webster, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
Response
I am honored to receive this award. I would like to thank my many excellent and generous collaborators over many years and to acknowledge in particular the creative and enjoyable interactions with members of my research group at Leeds.
—Ken Carslaw, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Citation for Meredith Hastings
We congratulate Dr. Meredith Hastings, winner of a 2014 Ascent Award “for increasing our understanding of the interlocking nature of the chemistry of the atmosphere, biosphere and climate and the role humans play in the interconnection.”
—Peter Webster, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
Response
I am grateful for the acknowledgement of this award. Thank you to my nominators, supporters, and the American Geophysical Union Atmospheric Sciences section awards committee for this honor. There are many aspects of my career that I find exciting and fulfilling—from the big picture of trying to understand changes in the environment to mentoring students to watching the data come off the mass spec—and the recognition from an award like this is additionally inspiring and energizing.
My “village” is rich and diverse, and I have so much appreciation for all of those who have influenced my path inside and outside science, from Dr. Gottfried, my eighth-grade science teacher who related everything to how the ocean works, to my high school and college mentors (special thanks to Joe Zawodny, Frank Millero, Gay Ingram, Jamie Goen, Dan O’Sullivan, Esa Peltola, Linda Farmer, Dan DiResta, and Peter Milne), to the deep and enriching education I received at Princeton. I am a better scientist for having worked with Danny Sigman (and Michael Bender, Bess Ward, George Philander, and Jorge Sarmiento). I cannot thank Chip Levy enough for leading me into atmospheric sciences and for his support, confidence, excellent mentoring, and care in balancing work and life. Thanks too for the interactions, advice, and training in knowability I received at the University of Washington from Gerard Roe, David Battisti, Eric Steig, and Tom Ackerman. The amazing women that are members of the Earth Science Women’s Network (ESWN) and my colleague, friend, and cheerleader Tracey Holloway, I have so benefited all along the way from your advice and support. Today, I am surrounded at Brown University by excellent colleagues, fantastic students, and Ruby Ho, without whom my lab would not be productive! To my amazing and supportive husband, Eric, and our beautiful girls, Anne and Lyla, thank you for being a constant source of joy.
—Meredith Hastings, Brown University, Providence, R.I.
Citation for Adam Sobel
We congratulate Dr. Adam Sobel, winner of a 2014 Ascent Award “for fundamental contributions leading to a better understanding of the dynamics of the tropical atmosphere.”
—Peter Webster, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
Response
I wish to thank Professor Webster and the Atmospheric Sciences section awards committee for selecting me for this award and also those who nominated me for it. It’s a great honor, and I am humbled to be in the company of previous recipients.
It takes a village, as the cliché goes. I learned the field first and foremost from my Ph.D. advisor, Alan Plumb, and my postdoctoral advisor, Chris Bretherton. Kerry Emanuel, Isaac Held, and David Neelin also stand out as mentors from whom I’ve been privileged to learn over the years. Lorenzo Polvani and Mark Cane have been my most important mentors and colleagues at Columbia, guiding me through academic life since I arrived here 15 years ago. Many more colleagues than I can name at my two Columbia homes—the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Math in Columbia’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences—have made this a wonderful place to go from junior to “midcareer.”
I have been especially fortunate, though, to be able to sustain long-term collaborative relationships with several people here in particular, especially Suzana Camargo and Michela Biasutti and, more recently, Michael Tippett and Shuguang Wang as well. Whatever success I have had in research over the last decade is due in large part to them, as well as to an outstanding series of postdocs and graduate students. I consider myself truly fortunate for having had the opportunity to work with scientists of this exceptional caliber. I hope that we are able to keep working together for many more years.
Most of all, I thank my family: my parents and sister; my wife, Marit Larson; and our sons, Eli and Samuel, for their love and support.
—Adam Sobel, Columbia University, New York, N.Y.
Citation for Rodney J. Weber
We congratulate Dr. Rodney Weber, winner of a 2014 Ascent Award “for significant advances in our understanding of aerosols and for the development of novel instrumentation to measure particle formation.”
—Peter Webster, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
Response
I feel very privileged to receive this award from the American Geophysical Union Atmospheric Sciences section and am truly indebted to those who committed their valuable time and effort into putting together my nomination. Receiving the award is a highlight of my research career and provides motivation to continue to pursue topics of interest to me in my own way. Of course, what successes I have had are largely due to the people I have worked with and the generosity of the community of scientists in my research area. This started from Virgil Marple taking me on as new graduate student with dubious background to Peter McMurry, my Ph.D. adviser, who was a role model and provided guidance and opportunities primed for success. After graduate school it was my many friends and colleagues at Brookhaven National Laboratory who showed by example the effort and rigor needed to do good science. But having spent most of my career at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), it is the efforts of my graduate students and postdocs and collaborations with Georgia Tech colleagues that have contributed the most. All of this would have been impossible and meaningless without the support of my family. I thank you all.
—Rodney J. Weber, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
Citation: AGU (2015), Carslaw, Hastings, Sobel, and Weber receive 2014 Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Awards, Eos, 96, doi:10.1029/2015EO026929. Published on 26 March 2015.
Text © 2015. The authors. CC BY-NC 3.0
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