Joye, Shepherd receive major career awards

Georgia Athletic Association Professor of Arts and Sciences Samantha Joye and Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor Marshall Shepherd recently received career-defining professional awards:

Professor of marine sciences and director of the Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf research consortium, Joye has been elected as a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. An international nonprofit scientific association with 60,000 members in 137 countries, the AGU is a worldwide scientific community, promoting discovery in Earth and space science for the benefit of humanity.

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"To be named a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union is such a tremendous honor and one that I could never have achieved by myself. I would not be in this position were it not for an amazing group of former and current undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral research scientists," Joye said. "I am so fortunate to have the most incredible and wonderful colleagues, especially those who share my love and fascination of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem, and an incredible team that works so hard to advance our Gulf ecosystem research."

Professor of geography and director of UGA's atmospheric sciences program, Shepherd will receive the 2018 Helmut E. Landsberg Award from the American Meteorological Society. The award, recognizing major advances in understanding urban impacts on rainfall climatology and for assessing the socio-economic value of urban precipitation forecasts, will be presented to Shepherd at the AMS Awards banquet on Jan. 10, 2018.

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"To be recognized by peers with one of the more significant awards in my field is particularly humbling and affirms that our body of work on how urbanization impacts weather and climate is having an impact," Shepherd said. "The Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professorship and sustained funding from NASA have enabled us to build a world-class research group on urban weather and climate at the University of Georgia. We are now attracting or retaining some of the best and brightest graduate students because of our work."

These aren't just two of UGA's best, but two of the best scientists anywhere. We are in proud of their accomplishments and humbled by their relentless commitment to education and their scientific mission to address some of the world's most pressing challenges.