Michael DeCaria receives PRSE summer fellowship

M.S. student Michael DeCaria has been selected to receive a Programs of Research and Scholarly Excellence summer fellowship. The award is made possible by the department’s designation as a Program of Research and Scholarly Excellence, for setting a standard of excellence in research, teaching and service.

DeCaria is excited to use his fellowship to apply the causal framework he and his adviser, Professor Peter Jan van Leeuwen, have been developing with colleagues at the University of Reading. They will use it on observation and model data to try to draw conclusions about the drivers of rapid intensification in tropical cyclones.

“We believe our framework will give us a fresh look at the problem, since we explicitly incorporate nonlinear interactions between drivers, something which is unique to our approach,” DeCaria said.

DeCaria and van Leeuwen are working with Associate Professor Christine Chiu and graduate student Matthew Lang on the framework’s first real-world application, while continuing to refine it. This summer’s study will be the first real-world application of their framework in its finished state.