Congratulations to the 2019 AGU Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award Recipients, Armin Sorooshian and Francina Dominguez!
Image: American Geophysical Union, Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award
Our warmest congratulations go to two of this year's amazing AGU Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award recipients, HAS Joint Professor Armin Sorooshian (UArizona Professor, Chemical and Environmental Engineering), and HAS Adjunct Professor Francina Dominguez (former UArizona Professor, Atmospheric Sciences)!
The Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award is presented annually and recognizes excellence in research and leadership in the atmospheric and climate sciences from honorees in their mid-careers, between 8 and 20 years of receiving their Ph.D. degrees.
Established in 2012, this award is given to up to four exceptional, mid-career scientists who are affiliated with AGU’s Atmospheric Sciences section or sub-section.
"Francina Dominguez will receive the 2019 Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award for her significant and fundamental contributions to the emerging field of terrestrial hydrometeorology, thereby significantly closing the gap between the atmospheric and hydrologic sciences, and for mentoring a new cadre of interdisciplinary scientists trained in the fundamentals of terrestrial hydrometeorology and its water management implications.
Francina’s research, as summarized in her nomination letter, is truly impressive. By choosing to study the atmosphere and the land surface as a “whole” (not just coupled) system, she was able to explore contributions of local evapotranspiration to regional precipitation and to thereby demonstrate how moisture cycles and recycles across the landscape. In addition, Francina has investigated the effects of climate variability and change on surface hydrology, projecting that future decreases in precipitation over the western United States will be accompanied by significant increases in extreme precipitation. These results led her to dig deeper into the physical mechanisms, such as atmospheric rivers (ARs). Some of her most recent work has demonstrated how large-scale atmospheric dynamics related to Rossby wave breaking can affect the formation of ARs and the manner in which they impinge into continental regions.
Besides being an exceptional scientist, Francina has pioneered the development of an educational curriculum for the emerging discipline of terrestrial hydrometeorology. At the University of Arizona, she co-directed (with W.J. "Jim" Shuttleworth) a newly formed academic program to bridge the traditional disciplines of hydrological and atmospheric sciences.
It is notable that Francina has achieved all of this while rearing a family—she is the proud mother of two young children. Because of the importance of her work, her generous personality, and her unparalleled ability to contribute to hydrometeorological understanding, Francina is richly deserving of the Ascent Award. On behalf of the AGU Atmospheric Sciences section, I am pleased to present the 2019 Ascent Award to Francina Dominguez.
—Hoshin Gupta, University of Arizona, Tucson
Armin Sorooshian is uniformly cited as one of the most important scholars worldwide in the field of aerosol–water relationships. He is the author of 123 peer-reviewed journal publications (including 41 papers in AGU journals). Early in his career, he was instrumental in bringing the Particle-into-Liquid Sampler (PILS) into the sphere of aircraft studies. He developed the Differential Aerosol Sizing and Hygroscopicity Spectrometer Probe (DASH-SP), the first instrument capable of measuring size-resolved aerosol hygroscopicity with fast time resolution. He also developed a novel Counterflow Virtual Impactor (CVI) inlet for airborne platforms to preferentially sample and evaporate cloud droplets to yield residual particles. Armin’s airborne measurements with the PILS and CVI instruments advanced knowledge of how clouds redistribute particles and modify aerosol composition. He was instrumental in unraveling the processes involved in the production of secondary organic aerosol by aqueous droplet chemistry. His work with the DASH-SP was important in several Navy and NASA airborne missions to advance understanding of aerosol hygroscopic properties. As a postdoctoral fellow with Graham Feingold, Armin used a combination of models, satellite data, and in situ observations to study the precipitation susceptibility of clouds to aerosol perturbations. He has been a leader in airborne fieldwork, as demonstrated by his being a principal investigator with the Navy Twin Otter aircraft in 15 airborne field projects. Armin’s impact in coming years will continue to grow, as evidenced by his having been selected recently as the principal investigator of the Aerosol Cloud Meteorology Interactions over the Western Atlantic Experiment (ACTIVATE), a $30-million NASA Earth Venture Class suborbital mission directed toward understanding aerosol–cloud–meteorology interactions over the western North Atlantic Ocean that will be carried out off the U.S. East Coast during 2019–2023. Furthermore, Armin has trained an impressive group of upcoming researchers in chemical engineering, atmospheric sciences, and public health.
—John H. Seinfeld, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
The awards were presented at the Atmospheric Sciences section dinner during the AGU Fall Meeting recently held December 9-13, 2019.
Congratulations, Armin and Francina! We are so very proud of your achievements!