Ph.D Student Wins Best Student Poster Presentation at his 10th AMS Conference

Ph.D Student Wins Best Student Poster Presentation at his 10th AMS Conference

This year marked Casey Griffin’s 10th American Meteorological Society conference and his 6th AMS annual meeting. Griffin, a Ph.D student at the School of Meteorology, came home from the 2019 conference with the Best Student Poster Presentation award for the poster, Phased Array Radar Symposium. He told us,

“It’s the 16th presentation I’ve given at one of the meetings, so perhaps all of the practice is paying off.”

Besides the research Griffin does as part of his Ph.D. dissertation, he is also involved with mobile radar data collection.

“The presentation that I won an award for actually wasn’t even for research that is part of my dissertation.  We take out our mobile radars every spring to collect tornado data, and this particular project was on some interesting observations we got in 2017.  We originally set out to do a seemingly straightforward verification of a previous hypothesis of near-tornado horizontal vortices.  However, we didn’t find exactly what we were expecting. Thats the fun part of doing scientific research though.  You almost always end up with more new questions than answers.”

Casey Griffin
Casey Griffin with one of the mobile radar trucks.

Griffin’s poster was a full summary of a year’s worth fo work, and took two weeks to make. Over the years he has really come to love presenting his work, he told us:

“One of the best things about presenting at AMS is the interaction I get to have with exceptional scientists and experts in my field.  Over the years, I’ve gotten to know quite a few wonderful people from all around the country and I enjoy seeing them and appreciate the feedback they give me on my research.”

Along with presenting and interacting with many other scientists, Griffin was able to take advantage of the conference location: Phoenix, Arizona.

“I really enjoyed Phoenix.  It was my last conference as a student and I tried to take a step back and appreciate how far I’ve come since my first AMS conference back in 2013.  I also had the chance to visit the Grand Canyon with my advisor the weekend before the conference.  I had never been to see the Grand Canyon, and even though we were there during a snowstorm, the glimpses I got of it were absolutely breathtaking.”

We’re very proud of the excellence displayed by Casey at this year’s conference and throughout his academic career.

“It’s really amazing how much growth as a student and scientist I’ve seen in myself and my friends over my 4 years here at OU.  It’s been a great opportunity to learn from and alongside scientists who are just as outstanding of people as they are researchers and I hope I never take for granted how fortunate I was to work in the Advanced Radar Research Center and be a part of the School of Meteorology.”

Casey Griffin