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Allen Research Group

Hail - Tornadoes - Climate Variability - Extremes

Latest News from the Research Group

August 15th 2023
Who knew summer would go by so fast! The group had an all hands mini-conference at the end of the week of August 10th to discuss research progress and new project directions - it was great to have everyone in person and enjoy a meal together. We are looking forward to the upcoming academic year with many new exciting papers and results on the way.

June 16th 2023
A warm group welcome to Dr. Subhadarsini Das, a new postdoctoral research fellow! Dr. Das completed her Ph.D. in Water Resources Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Warangal in 2022, working on characterization of non-stationary characteristics of regional drought.

May 15th 2023
Excited to share that two new Ph.D. students have joined our group. Kaleb Clover joins us from the University of Michigan where he recently completed his M.Eng. in Applied Climate. Kaleb will be working on a project supported by the National Institutes for Standards and Technology. Aaron Zeeb joins us from Northern Illinois University, where he has recently wrapped up his M.S. in Geography. Aaron will be working on a project in collaboration with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where we are performing the first detailed project exploring radar and environmental properties of left-moving supercells.

May 5th 2023
Nixon Graduation
After four long years in the program, suffering through COVID, and many trials and tribulations excited to share that Dr. Cameron Nixon has successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation 'The Impacts of Hodograph Shape on Supercell Behavior and Hazards', and walked in commencement on May 5th. Cameron isn't quite sure yet on what is next (the next day he was in close proximity to a wedge tornado), but we wish him all the best.

January 20st 2021
Another semester has begun! We are excited to welcome one of two new Ph.D. students who be working in our group supported by the NSF CAREER Award. Carlos López has recently arrived from Colombia, and will be working on the processes associated with severe thunderstorms around the world. Alan Rosales has also joined the group from Peru to work on the same project. In other news, we have 3 summer research internship opportunities for summer 2021, working on dryline climatology, hail environments and global severe convection.

December 22nd 2020
Another busy semester has drawn to a close, and topping off a great year, congratulations to Cameron Nixon on his first paper from his Ph.D. research 'Anticipating Deviant Tornado Motion Using a Simple Hodograph Technique', in Weather and Forecasting. This joins 11 other publications in what has been a great year for our group, including 2 papers lead-author by Alumnus Dr. Maria Molina, who has become a project scientist at NCAR. We look forward to new graduate and undergraduate students joining the group over the next months to begin new adventures in a bright new year!

August 25th 2020
Despite the challenges of COVID-19 research continues. Dr. Allen will be collaborating with Dr. Amy McGovern from AI2ES at the University of Oklahoma on a new project to look at transitioning automated front detection to first guess guidance for operational frontal analyses under a new NOAA JTTI project. This project will provide undergraduate opportunities for the next two summers and support Alyssa Woodward, a Masters student at the University of Oklahoma co-advised by Dr. Allen.

March 25th 2020
Exciting News! Dr. Allen has been awarded an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award! This is a prestigious 5-year award that will provide support to further our understanding of severe convection and its impacts around the globe and its links to a changing climate. You can read more details about the project here. It will also support a number of student opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, and in collaboration with NCAR's SciEd program, develop educational resources and modules.

February 14th 2020
The new year has begun with a bang for our research group, with 12 contributions of oral and poster presentations at the 100th AMS Annual Meeting. Everyone did a great job, with excellent presentations in the main conference from Olivia VanBuskirk, Nicholas Bogen, and Daniel Butler. There have also been four new publications, including another paper from the highly productive Dr. Maria Molina, a review of hail science from Dr. Allen, and collaborations looking at hail size in China and sub-seasonal forecasting over severe weather in the US. Dr. Allen also was announced a recipient of the Provost's Award for Outstanding Research and Productivity.

August 27th 2019
As the year marches on, our group has continued to have success. Dr. Allen was a recent receipient of the '2019 Central Michigan University College of Science and Engineering Award for Outstanding Research'. This award would not have been possible but for the work of the group and collaborators. We also welcome two new group members for the semester; Elizabeth Wawrzyniak and Dennis Weaver.

August 1st 2019
As of August 1st our group has new support in the form of an NSF PREEVENTS grant (NSF-AGS1855054) 'PREEVENTS Track 2: Collaborative Research: Improving High-Impact Hail Event Forecasts by Linking Hail Environments and Modeled Hailstorm Processes', in collaboration with Dr. Rebecca Adams-Selin (AER), Dr. Matthew Kumjian (Penn State), and Dr. Conrad Ziegler (NSSL). As part of this new project, we have a new group member, Cameron Nixon, a Ph.D. student who will be joining us from Texas Tech. He will be working on hail forecasting research related to the project, with a specific focus on wind fields.

April 22nd 2019
Maria Graduation
Big news for our group! I am pleased to announce that Dr. Maria Molina successfully defended her Ph.D. Dissertation on April 22nd 2019. Congratulations Maria! Maria will be leaving our group at the end of the summer (2019) to begin an NCAR ASP Postdoctoral Fellowship in Boulder. Picture above is from Maria's commencement cermony on May 3rd.

April 20th 2019
New Paper Alert! Maria's second Ph.D. related paper has recently appeared as an early online release in Journal of Climate 'On the Moisture Origins of Tornadic Thunderstorms' - you can check it out here.

March 19th 2019
Student News! It is a busy summer ahead for the group with Olivia Vanbuskirk heading off to University of Michigan for the summer as part of the REU program down there. Congrats to Olivia. Meanwhile, Dan Butler will be out in the field with the TORUS field campaign with Dr. Jason Keeler and will be continuing his tornado research with the group.

March 8th 2019
New Paper Alert! In a new collaboration with colleagues from Europe led by Mateusz Taszarek, we published a European Climatology of Thunderstorms and Severe Thunderstorms using a mixture of data sources, including thunderstorm reports, lightning data and environmental proxies. This paper has proven very popular since its release in March, and is the most read Journal of Climate paper in the past 12 months and 5th most read AMS journal publication in the past year! The paper is entitled 'A Climatology of Thunderstorms across Europe from a Synthesis of Multiple Data Sources' - and you can check it out here.