HAS Faculty Xiquan Dong, Ali Behrangi, and Baike Xi Receive Provost's Investment Fund Award

Congratulations to HAS faculty members Xiquan Dong, Ali Behrangi, and Baike Xi who have received a $184K grant from the Fall 2022 Provost Investment Fund competition. Their successful proposal, Strengthening the UA contribution to NASA Earth System Atmospheric Observing System mission, was 1 of 9 awards made from among the 64 proposals submitted.

Dong provided a brief description of the project: "The Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) is one component of the Earth System Observatory designed by NASA to provide key information to guide efforts related to climate change, natural hazard mitigation, and improving real-time agricultural processes. AOS will make the first-ever global measurements from space that reveal how ice and water move vertically within clouds. The AOS instruments are consisting of both the active and passive remote sensors, including W-band Doppler radar (95 GHz, detecting clouds), Ka-/Ku-band radars (35.5/13.6 GHz, detecting clouds, precipitation, and snowfall), High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL, 532 and 1064 nm, measuring aerosol backscatter and extinction), and microwave radiometer (measuring atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles, and cloud liquid water path). In this proposed research, we will use the DOE ship-based (95 GHZ) and NSF aircraft carried (95) GHz radars measurements over the Southern Ocean to assess the current NASA satellites radars measurements (CloudSat 95 GHz, Global Precipitation Measurement GPM Ka/Ku-band Dual-frequency precipitation radar; CloudSat-GPM Coincidence Dataset available at https://gpm.nasa.gov/resources/documents/cloudsat-gpm-coincidence-datas…). Eventually, we will develop new cloud and precipitation retrieval algorithms based on AOS comprehensive measurements."

The Provost solicited faculty and staff proposals that were innovative, aspirational, and aligned with the University's strategic plan, and followed the institutional priorities of:

• Increasing student success, including graduation and retention rates, especially for groups underrepresented within the relevant disciplines
• Promoting growth and opportunities to generate new revenue for the institution
• Expanding student experiential learning
• Enhancing research capacity
• Promoting diversity and inclusion

The nine proposals selected will receive funding totaling $1,464,200 for two years.

Congratulations, Xiquan, Ali, and Baike!