William Cotton selected for elite honor by cloud physics organization

Professor Emeritus William Cotton has been chosen for an honor given to only one member of the cloud physics community every four years. He has been elected as an Honorary Member of the International Commission on Clouds and Precipitation, an organization based in the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences.

Every four years, the commission organizes the International Conference on Clouds and Precipitation, a top forum for atmospheric scientists to share their research on clouds and precipitation, in Pune, India. Cotton has attended the conference since the early 1970s. This year he spoke at the virtual event in August and accepted his award acknowledging his “career of outstanding scientific contributions to cloud and precipitation physics.”

Cotton joined CSU’s atmospheric science faculty in 1974. He has received numerous honors from the college and university over the years, including the Engineering Dean’s Council Award for excellence in atmospheric research, the Abell Faculty Research Graduate Program Support Award, the Research Foundation Researcher of the Year Award, and the Jack Cermak Distinguished Advisor Award. His Ph.D. alma mater, Penn State University, gave him the Charles L. Hosler Alumni Scholar Award, and the Weather Modification Association presented him with the Schaefer Award for scientific and technological discoveries that constituted a major contribution to the advancement of weather modification.

Cotton is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA). He has published more than 190 papers in peer-reviewed journals and authored nine book chapters, one book, and a memoir, and co-authored two additional books. He considers the most significant achievement of his career to be advising students, including 44 Ph.D.s, 44 M.S. students and 12 postdocs.