Dr. Michael Bell has been awarded the highly competitive Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

(2017-01-09) -- written by Jayme DeLoss

Colorado State University associate professor Michael Bell has been awarded the highly competitive Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for his groundbreaking work observing and modeling tropical cyclones.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR), who named Bell an ONR Young Investigator in 2015, nominated him for the award. Bell has a longstanding research collaboration with the ONR on tropical cyclone formation and evolution. “Tropical cyclones are a big problem for the U.S. Navy, but also for the coastal residents of the U.S. and around the globe,” Bell noted.

Bell is also the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award, under which he and his research group are conducting analyses of Doppler radar, dropsonde, satellite, and other observations to better understand the factors that impact tropical cyclone intensification.

“We still have difficulties forecasting them, but we’ve made a lot of progress over the years,” Bell said. “The real frontier of what we’re doing now is combining observations and numerical weather prediction models in really exciting ways. ”