Paola Crippa, assistant professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences with a joint appointment in the Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics, has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award.

NSF CAREER awards are among the highest honors awarded to young faculty.

Crippa’s research project focuses on developing a new modeling framework to improve predictions of atmospheric processes, especially weather events with high societal impacts such as air pollution and wildfires.

This new framework will integrate numerical simulations with data from field experiments to better explain how atmospheric conditions vary over shorter distances and briefer time intervals than existing models currently capture.

For the educational component of her CAREER project, she will develop new course materials, including atmospheric science lesson plan kits to support education in local elementary and middle schools.

During the 2022-2023 academic year, seven researchers at the University of Notre Dame received this prestigious early career awards from the National Science Foundation.