UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Jenni Evans, professor of meteorology and atmospheric science in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State, has been elected president of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). AMS is the nation’s premier scientific and professional organization promoting and disseminating information about the atmospheric, oceanic and hydrologic sciences.
For her four-year appointment, Evans will serve as the AMS president-elect during 2018, as AMS president in 2019 and as past president in 2020. Evans will assume the president-elect role during the AMS 98th Annual Conference scheduled for Jan. 7-11, 2018 in Austin, Texas.
“Jenni has been involved with AMS for many years on numerous levels,” said Keith Seitter, AMS executive director. “The community will benefit greatly from the wealth of experience she brings to her new leadership role.”
“As the AMS embarks on its second century, increases in data diversity and volume, combined with expanding computer capacity and new methodologies, position us at a new horizon for understanding and predicting the Earth system. We are also realizing a new opportunity to increase the diversity of our community, and must make increasing diversity one of our core priorities. Finally, improving our communications with decision makers and society more broadly is imperative. I look forward to working with our new and continuing council and leadership, as well as the AMS core staff and volunteers to advance these and other objectives of the AMS mission,” said Evans.
AMS was founded in 1919 and will celebrate its 100-year anniversary in 2019. Evans said, “I am excited to be hosting the AMS 100th anniversary meeting focusing on a new century of earth sciences advances enabled by advanced computation, and emphasizing communications and impact.”
Evans is also the director of the Institute for Cyber Science (ICS), one of the five interdisciplinary research institutes under the Office of the Vice President for Research. ICS is dedicated to supporting cyber-enabled research across the disciplines.
Her research focuses on tropical cyclones and tropical meteorology, statistical meteorology, climate, numerical weather prediction and convection studies. As much of her work has involved forecasting and predicting tropical cyclones using advanced computational techniques, she is an expert in the big data research that ICS enables.
Prior to joining the Penn State faculty, Evans was a visiting scientist with the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and a research scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Melbourne, Australia.
Evans received her bachelor of science degree with honors and her doctorate in applied mathematics from Monash University.