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 - Postdoctoral Researchers
Dr. Subhadarsini Das
das11s [at] cmich [dot] edu
LinkedIn
Google Scholar
Researchgate
Dr. Das joined the group at CMU in Summer 2023, as part of the project Quantifying the Risk and Impact of Wind and Hail Storms in a Warming Climate, and focuses on enhancing estimations of hail size and wind speed return levels, and explore how these change in a non-stationary framework. Dr. Das earned a Master of Technology in 2018 and completed her Ph.D. in Water Resources Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Warangal in 2022. Her PhD work was based on drought characterization, propagation and risk over an Indian region. Her specialities include non-stationary extreme value analysis, risk analysis and societal impacts of meteorological events such as droughts. She is now a Senior Research Scientist position on GRID India project at IIT, Bombay.
Dr. Deepak Gopalakrishnan
gopal1d [at] cmich [dot] edu
Google Scholar
Dr. Gopalakrishnan joined the group at CMU in Fall 2022, as part of the project Geospatial predictive analysis of damaging hail and wind occurrences in the lower 48 states and Canada . Deepak obtained a Masters degree in Meteorology from Cochin University of Science and Technology, India, and a PhD in Atmospheric Science from Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology. Deepak later worked at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology as a Project Scientist and at the New York University Abu Dhabi as a Postdoc. Deepak's research interests include weather and climate modeling, severe thunderstorms, and climate change. Deepak published an evaluation of CMIP6 models over North America, illustrating their differences in limitations in representing convective environments, and contributed to ongoing work looking at future projections over North America. Deepak is now a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Reading, UK.
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. Cameron is now a Research Scientist at the University of Oklahoma CIWRO/Storm Prediction Center.
Dr. Letícia dos Santos
deoli1l [at] cmich [dot] edu
Leticia was Fullbright Brazil Scholar during her Ph.D., and visited for the academic year 2021-2022 from the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, where she worked with Dr. Ernani Nascimento. She was co-supervised by Dr. Allen for her Ph.D. research which focused on severe thunderstorm environments in South America and their climatology. She is now a Meteorologist at the Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia (INMET)
Alan Jesus García Rosales
garci3aj [at] cmich [dot] edu
Alan joined the group at CMU in Summer 2021, pursuing his Ph.D. in the Earth and Ecosystem Science Program, supported by the NSF CAREER project 'Toward a Global Understanding of Severe Convective Environments' (NSF-AGS1945286). Alan completed a Bachelors of Science at National Agrarian University La Molina, Peru, and subsequently a Masters of Science at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Sáo Paulo, Brazil. Alan was formerly an Advanced Environmental Modeling Analyst at the National Meteorology and Hydrology Service of Peru. Alan has since returned to Peru.
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
Lecturer, 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.
Alumni - Undergraduate Students
Mitchell Green (CMU Grad 2024)
MS Student, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Mitchell worked on a project exploring global differences in hail environments. He completed an REU internship, and is currently studying for his MS at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln focusing on flash droughts.
Kyle Gillett (CMU Grad 2024)
MS Student, University of North Dakota Kyle worked on a project related to the spatial distribution of environments around hailstorms, and was the developer of the SounderPy package. He is currently studying supercell dynamics of mergers using CM1 at the University of North Dakota.
Barbara O'Neill (CMU Grad 2023)
MS, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
PhD Student, Central Michigan University Barbara 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. She is currently pursuing a PhD on post-storm airmass response over hail swaths as part of the ICECHIP project.
Elizabeth Wawrzyniak (CMU Grad 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 (CMU Grad 2023)
Meteorologist, 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 Meteorologist, 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 PhD Geography, 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 defended her Ph.D. in February 2026.
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
Ph.D. Meteorology, University of Oklahoma
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, National Centers for Atmospheric Research 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, and PhD in Spring 2024. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National Centers for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO.
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 Atmospheric Measurement Science Specialist, Argonne National Laboratory 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.
