Allen Research Group
Hail - Tornadoes - Climate Variability - Extremes
Group Alumni
Here you can find former members of the research group and what they are up to now - sadly all good things must come to end but its great to see all the amazing things people are doing!
Alumni - Graduate Students
Dr. Maria J. Molina
timme1mj [at] cmich [dot] edu
Twitter
Maria successfully defended her Ph.D. in the Earth and Ecosystem Science Program in April 2019, completed an NCAR ASP Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, and spent time as a Project Scientist at NCAR. Maria is a faculty member at the University of Maryland in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, you can check out her group page here.
Maria's research focus was on extreme weather and climate. Maria completed her Masters of Climate and Society thesis with Dr. Allen at Columbia University. Her Ph.D. research focused on the variability of severe convective storms, exploring these problems through the use of climatological analysis of observations and favorable environments, the moisture origins of tornadic storms using Lagrangian parcel trajectories and attributing tornado activity to anomalous sea surface temperatures using modeling perturbation studies. Maria won a Student Oral Presentation Award at the 29th AMS Conference on Severe Local Storms for her work using Lagrangian parcel trajectories.
Dr. Cameron Nixon
nixon3cj [at] cmich [dot] edu
Twitter
Webpage
Cameron joined the group at CMU in Fall 2019, pursuing his Ph.D. in the Earth and Ecosystem Science Program, supported by the NSF PREEVENTS hail project (NSF-AGS1855054).
Cameron's research focus is on the environments associated with supercell storms, especially those producing hail and their morphologies. Cameron graduated with a B.S. in Meteorology from Valparaiso University, and comes to the group after completing research as a Masters student at Texas Tech University looking at lightning as a predictor for tornadic activity. Cameron defended his dissertation in May 2023, which focused on the environmental profiles and storm interaction processes that characterize hailstorms, and is currently looking for his next opportunity while working on wrapping up a couple of Ph.D. papers.
Nicholas Bogen
BS Meteorology (CMU 2019), MS GIS (CMU 2020)
Twitter
Nick graduated in Spring 2019 with Meteorology degree from Central Michigan University, and completed his accelerated Masters of Science in Geographic Information Science program through the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at CMU, focusing on the impacts of hail on agricultural losses across the United States. Nick is now a GIS Coordinator in Bay City, MI.
Alumni - Visiting Scholars
Dr. Bartosz Czernecki
Assistant Professor, Department of Meteorology and Climatology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland Bartosz was a visiting scientist sponsored by a Polish National Research Foundation Grant as a visiting scientist for 2 months in Fall 2019. His work focused on post-processing of climate model data to explore the impacts of climate change on severe convective storms over the US and Europe.
Letícia dos Santos
deoli1l [at] cmich [dot] edu
Leticia is a Ph.D. candidate and Fullbright Brazil Scholar, and visited for the academic year 2021-2022 from the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, where she works with Dr. Ernani Nascimento.
Leticia's research focuses on severe thunderstorm environments in Brazil and their climatology.
Alumni - Undergraduate Students
Ethan O'Neill (CMU Graduate 2023)
MS Student, University of North Carolina, Charlotte (Fall 2023) Ethan worked on on the development of new datasets of severe weather observations through use of radar and environmental analysis, and won an award for a poster on his work on long-tracked supercells at the AMS Annual Meeting 2023 in the 6th Research to Operations conference.
Elizabeth Wawrzyniak (CMU Graduate 2022)
MS Student, Northern Illinois University Elizabeth first looked at hailstorm environments and the synoptic precursors that lead to these events under the NSF PREEVENTS project, and exploring how they vary geographically. Her 2nd project worked on dryline detection under the NOAA JTTI project.
Scott Thomas
Trainee Forecaster - NWS Grand Rapids Scott worked on both the NSF CAREER and NSF PREEVENTS project, exploring the properties of hail environments between different regions. He received a 2022 NOAA Pathways Internship and began as a meteorologist at NWS Grand Rapids in Spring 2023.
Dennis Weaver (CMU Grad 2021)
M.S. Geography, Villanova University Dennis was a NOAA Hollings scholar and Honors student, completing his thesis with Dr. Allen. His research looked at approaches that can be used with storm data to infer the resulting impacts to property and life. Dennis looked at damage relationships to hailstorm occurrence and properties and their relationship to the environment under the NSF PREEVENTS project. Dennis now works on commerical scale Photovoltaic power plant risk and engineering evaluations at VDE Americas.
Brian Horan (CMU Grad 2021)
M.S. Atmospheric Science, University of North Dakota
Currently Ph.D. Student, SUNY Albany Brian worked on the use of social media scraping to obtain severe weather reports, and approaches to derive novel tornado observations from storm chaser imagery. He completed a Masters in Atmospheric Science at the University of North Dakota in Summer 2023, and is now pursuing a Ph.D. at SUNY Albany.
Daniel Butler (CMU Grad 2020)
MS Earth and Atmospheric Science University of Nebraska-Lincoln NWS Intern, Spokane, WA Twitter Dan looked at approaches to derive novel tornado observations from storm chaser imagery and presented his research at the 2020 AMS Annual Meeting. During summer 2019 he participated in the TORUS field campaign. Dan is hoping to go to graduate school to pursue research related to severe convective storms. He recently completed his Masters in Earth and Atmospheric Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in Spring 2022, and is now an NWS Intern at the Spokane, WA office.
Olivia Vanbuskirk (CMU Grad 2020)
MS Geography, University of Oklahoma Currently Pursuing PhD, University of Oklahoma Twitter Olivia is looking at the distributional characteristics of hail size over major metropolitan areas. She presented her research at the 2020 AMS Annual Meeting, winning a 3rd prize for her oral presentation. Olivia received the American Meteorological Societies Women in Science Scholarship, and completed a summer REU at the University of Michigan. She completed a Masters in Geography at the University of Oklahoma in Spring 2022 and is now pursuing a Ph.D..
Anthony Wilson (CMU Grad 2020)
BS Geography
Currently Ph.D. Student, UCSD Twitter Anthony completed a McNair Scholars summer project during 2018 and was part of NCAR's SOARS program summer 2019. He is now a graduate research assistant at Scripps Institute at the University of California, San Diego.
Emily Tinney (CMU Grad 2018)
MS Meteorology, University of Oklahoma
Currently Ph.D. Candidate in Meteorology, University of Oklahoma Twitter Emily completed an Honors Thesis and research project on climate change and severe storms during 2017/2018, and received her MS at the University of Oklahoma in Fall 2020.
Cody Converse (CMU Grad 2018)
MS Geography and Meteorology, Northern Illinois University Air quality data specialist, DNR Wisconsin Email Cody completed an independent research project on the sensitivity hail to simulated storms in WRF to microphysical parameterizations.
Brent Hewett (CMU Grad 2017)
MS Geography, Ball State University NWS Forecaster, Twin Cities Twitter Brent completed an independent research project looking at radar derived precipitation over the Davis Mountains in West Texas.
Matthew Tuftedal (CMU Grad 2017)
MS Atmospheric Science, University of North Dakota Instrumentation Specialist/Meteorologist, Radiometrics Corporation Matt completed an independent study on the August 2016 Grand Rapids Tornado Outbreak.
Jaris Dingman (CMU Grad 2017)
Current Position Unknown Jaris completed an independent research project looking at tornado occurrence over Michigan.
