Wakefield brings home prize from Graduate Student Research and Creativity Day

Each year, the Graduate College hosts a Student Research and Creativity Day (SRCD), which gives graduate students an opportunity to present their ongoing projects and research in a competitive poster session. With over 45 graduate entries, the 2018 SRCD was a big success, showcasing a broad range of graduate research.

Ryann Wakefield, a Meteorology Masters student working for Professor Jeff Basara as part of the CHEW-e (Climate Hydrology Ecosystems and Weather) research group, took second place in the Engineering/Science A category. This was Wakefield’s first year entering in SRCD. Wakefield presented her Master’s work on how land surface influences the development of precipitation. Her focus has been specific to Oklahoma, looking into Mesonet data and finding important relationships between soil moisture and precipitation.

Meteorology has always been a passion for Wakefield, who also holds a degree in psychology. She returned to the classroom to pursue Meteorology in 2013, obtaining her Bachelors in Meteorology from Rutgers University. She had a goal to attend OU for graduate school in Meteorology for years prior to attending. She found that while she didn’t know much about researching meteorology prior to getting started in the field, but once she got a taste of it, she didn’t want to go home at the end of the day.

Wakefield enjoyed this opportunity to present her work, and she said, she was thrilled to be able to make her research relevant to people outside of meteorology and society in general. Congratulations, Ryann!