Assistant Professor Dr. Scott Salesky Receives NSF CAREER Award

Assistant Professor Dr. Scott Salesky Receives NSF CAREER Award

Scott Salesky, an assistant professor of meteorology in the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, is leading research that will improve the way clouds are represented in weather and climate models. The five-year project is funded by a $763,930 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation. 

This project will use simulations of small-scale interactions between millions of cloud droplets and turbulence and will allow the researchers to track the droplets’ positions, movements and sizes as they interact to form, grow and evaporate. 

In later stages of the project, Salesky plans to use the simulations he develops to improve meteorologists’ basic understanding of interactions between turbulence and clouds, and to understand how to better model cloud processes in weather and climate models. 

The project also supports an educational component to increase graduate student enrollment in atmospheric sciences from students in other STEM fields, and to develop lesson plans that connect engineering and physics concepts with atmospheric science. 

Salesky is working with faculty partners at Cameron University in Lawton, the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma in Chickasha, and the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond to test lesson plans he will develop that teach physics concepts in a meteorological context. The faculty partners will then provide feedback on the lesson plans so that final versions can be made publicly available through the K20 LEARN Repository at OU’s K20 Center, a statewide research and development center. The collaboration with the Oklahoma universities will also support undergraduate research opportunities for students from the three schools to gain experience in atmospheric science research at OU. 

Along with turbulence and cloud research, Dr. Saleksy also focuses his research on convective boundary layers, large eddy simulation, particle-laden flows, boundary layers over complex surface topography, and surface hydrology.  

Dr. Salesky is not just a proud and accomplished researcher, he is also an experienced professor in the School of Meteorology. His undergraduate level classes focus on Meteorological Measurement Systems and Atmospheric Circulations while his graduate classes focus on Turbulence and Boundary Layer Meteorology. 

 

To read more about Dr. Salesky’s NSF Career Award, follow the link below: 

OU Meteorologist’s Cloud Research Recognized by National Science Foundation 

 

To discover more about Dr. Salesky and his research projects, follow the link below: 

Scott Salesky | University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology