Achievement

VORTEX2 is the largest, most ambitious effort ever made to understand tornadoes. Our IGERT faculty and trainees are participating in this unique field program in May-June 2009 and May-June 2010. The NSF and NOAA together are contributing towards this effort to understand the genesis of tornadoes. Participants from IGERT include trainees Brown and Giammanco, along with other wind science and engineering doctoral students. These participants will travel through the Midwest US while being headquartered in Oklahoma City. Each IGERT Trainee is leading a four person team to deploy 2.5m meteorological observing stations that collect data. Trainees retrieve StickNet stations after the storm and process the storm's data to determine tornado formation. Trainees are handling media requests while in the field which increases their level of professionalism and ability to present their knowledge to any audience.