Distinguished Professor Lance Bosart Receives NWA Lifetime Achievement Award

Distinguished Professor Lance Bosart received the National Weather Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award “for over 40 years of contributions to meteorology through operationally-relevant research, direct interactions with forecasters, and educating a generation of researchers, professors, forecasters, and NOAA employees.”

Professor Bosart has led an accomplished career in meteorological research, teaching and service to the community. His influence has kept synoptic meteorology a vibrant field. Fresh with his Ph.D. from MIT he joined the University at Albany in 1969 as an assistant professor, where he was appointed to the rank of Distinguished Professor in 2004 and remains an active instructor for an amazing 45 years. He has mentored 29 Ph.D. students. Of these, one is the Vice President of National Taiwan University, 11 hold professorships around the world (US, China, UK), two are lecturers, and three hold leadership positions in the National Weather Service. He also has supervised 85 Master’s of Science students and nine postdoctoral researchers (five now in professorships). He won the first American Meteorological Society Teaching Excellence Award “for enthusiastic and skilled undergraduate and graduate teaching and mentoring of a generation of atmospheric science students” (2002). By teaching through research-oriented exploration and active map room discussions with a research focus, his research excellence rubs off into his teaching excellence.

Professor Bosart's research has had a vast influence on the field of synoptic meteorology. Although a robust and meaningful discipline in the 1950s, by the 1970s, it languished from a lack of young talent. Professor Bosart was crucial in carrying the discipline through that rough period until its rebirth in the 1980s. He has conducted research on a wide range of topics including explosive cyclogenesis, Hurricanes, fronts , cyclones, and tornadoes to name just a few. He has researched weather systems on five continents. He holds one of the highest research awards of the American Meteorological Society, the Jule Charney Award (1992).

Professor Bosart has also served the research and operational community in formal and informal ways. He resurrected the then-defunct Cyclone Workshop in the early 1990s, enlarging its scope and attendance. He was instrumental in organizing the Fred Sanders Symposium (2004) and international summer schools at NCAR on convective storms (2006) and the weather and climate interface (2012). He was appointed to the National Research Council Board of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (1997–1999) and served as co-Chair of the US THORPEX Steering Committee (2006–2009), ensuring that these august bodies kept their feet on the ground with operational concerns. Since 1999, he has managed a weather-map e-mail discussion list that currently boasts over 300 attendees from at least nine countries. This discussion group focuses on operationally relevant issues, and several potential research projects on operationally oriented forecast issues arise every week.

For more information about the Department of Atmospheric & Environmental Sciences: http://www.atmos.albany.edu/

For more information about Professor Bosart: http://www.atmos.albany.edu/index.php?d=faculty_view&facultyLink=bosart

For more information about the National Weather Association:
http://www.nwas.org/

10-22-2012