Ackerman Elected 2014 AMS Fellow
Steve Ackerman. Credit: Jeff Miller, UW-Madison, University Communications.
Steve Ackerman, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and director of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been elected a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS).
This honor and distinction is reserved for those who have made “outstanding contributions to the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences or their applications during a substantial period of years.”
Ackerman is an expert in the area of satellite meteorology, a field that has its earliest roots at the UW-Madison. An active proponent of the Wisconsin Idea to expand the impact of the University beyond the classroom, Ackerman is an accomplished teacher and scientist, with distinguished teaching awards from the AMS and the UW-Madison. Ackerman also serves as associate dean of the physical sciences in the UW-Madison Graduate School. In addition, he is widely known for his role as one of the Weather Guys, making complex weather phenomena understandable to audiences across radio and print media.
Professor Ping Yang of Texas A&M University, who led the nomination said, “Ackerman’s scientific accomplishments and his services to the atmospheric research community eminently qualify him for being elected as AMS Fellow.”
Ackerman finds himself in elite company – a number of his colleagues at the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC), CIMSS and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) have been elected Fellows of the AMS in recognition of their distinguished careers. They include: Francis P. Bretherton, Reid A. Bryson, Edwin W. Eloranta, Stefan L. Hastenrath, Lyle H. Horn, David D. Houghton, Donald R. Johnson, John E. Kutzbach, Heinz Lettau, Zhengyu Liu, Paul Menzel, Ralph A. Petersen, Werner Schwerdtfeger, William L. Smith, Charles R. Stearns, Verner E. Suomi, Christopher S. Velden, Pao K. Wang, and John A. Young.
By Jean Phillips