Reno, Nev. (Sep. 23, 2024) – DRI is pleased to announce that the 26th annual Peter B. Wagner Memorial Award for Women in Atmospheric Sciences has been awarded to Catherine (Casey) Ivanovich of Columbia University. An award ceremony commemorating her achievement was held at the DRI campus in Reno on Sep. 23, 2024.
The Peter B. Wagner Memorial Award for Women in Atmospheric Sciences is an annual competition recognizing the published works of women pursuing a master’s or Ph.D. in the atmospheric sciences or any related program at a university in the United States. The award is presented to women graduate students with outstanding academic publications and includes a $1,500 prize. This award has been presented annually by DRI since 1998 and is the only such honor designated for graduate women in the atmospheric sciences in the United States.
Ivanovich graduated from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University in July 2024 and is receiving this award for her paper Stickiness: A New Variable to Characterize the Temperature and Humidity Contributions toward Humid Heat. She is now a postdoctoral fellow at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Ivanovich earned her B.A. in Geosciences from Princeton University, where she earned the Edward Sampson Prize in Environmental Geosciences for her senior thesis. At Columbia University, she earned an M.A. and M.Phil. in Earth and Environmental Sciences and completed her Ph.D. in the same department. Her Ph.D. dissertation title is Characterizing the Local, Regional, and Global Drivers of Extreme Humid Heat.
Ivanovich is a climate scientist interested in the physical and social drivers of climate variability and change. She is passionate about investigating the dynamics and impacts of climate extremes, as well as communicating scientific concepts in accessible and engaging ways for the public. Her award-winning study untangles the distinct contributions of temperature and humidity toward heat extremes. She introduced a new variable called “stickiness” to help identify the primary driver of a given extreme humid heat event, which increases the risk of health impacts to communities by inhibiting the cooling impacts of sweat.
“I am incredibly honored to be this year’s recipient of the Wagner Memorial Award,” she says. “I believe that the complex, interdisciplinary research questions in climate science can be much more effectively addressed by uplifting diverse perspectives, including increasing gender diversity in our field. This recognition is thus especially meaningful to me, and I want to thank the selection committee and Sue Wagner for making this award possible.”
The Wagner Award committee members highlighted the importance of Ivanovich’s research. “It was a very challenging task to select the best paper among all the excellent Wagner Award 2024 applications,” said Vera Samburova, chair of the committee. “However, Catherine’s work stood out because of its significance in the assessment of global humidity and elevated temperatures, which can pose a direct risk to human health, especially in the continuously warming global climate.”
Finalists for the 2024 award include:
2nd place – Greta E.M. Shum from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, for the paper Ocean bays surrounded by desert land could support photosynthetic life on Snowball Earth.
3rd place goes to three researchers –
- Bryony Puxley (School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma, for the paper: The Wildfire Impacts of the 2017-2018 Precipitation Whiplash Event Across the Southern Great Plains).
- Katherine L. Ackerman (Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Hawai‘i at Ma noa, for the paper: Mechanisms controlling giant sea salt aerosol size distributions along a tropical orographic coastline).
- Naomi G. Asimow (Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, for the paper: Sustained Reductions of Bay Area CO2 Emissions 2018−2022).
About the Peter B. Wagner Memorial Award
Ms. Sue Wagner — former Nevada Gaming Commissioner, Nevada Lieutenant Governor, and widow of DRI Atmospheric Scientist, Dr. Peter B. Wagner — created the Peter B. Wagner Memorial Award for Women in Atmospheric Sciences in 1998. Dr. Wagner, a faculty member at DRI since 1968, was killed while conducting research in a 1980 plane crash that also claimed the lives of three other Institute employees.
In 1981, Dr. Wagner’s family and friends established a memorial scholarship to provide promising graduate students in DRI’s Atmospheric Sciences Program an award to further pursue their professional careers. Since 1998, this opportunity has extended specifically to women pursuing graduate education across the nation.
About DRI
We are Nevada’s non-profit research institute, founded in 1959 to empower experts to focus on science that matters. We work with communities across the state — and the world — to address their most pressing scientific questions. We’re proud that our scientists continuously produce solutions that better human and environmental health.
Scientists at DRI are encouraged to follow their research interests across the traditional boundaries of scientific fields, collaborating across DRI and with scientists worldwide. All faculty support their own research through grants, bringing in nearly $5 to the Nevada economy for every $1 of state funds received. With more than 600 scientists, engineers, students, and staff across our Reno and Las Vegas campuses, we conducted more than $47 million in sponsored research focused on improving peoples’ lives in 2023 alone.
At DRI, science isn’t merely academic — it’s the key to future-proofing our communities and building a better world. For more information, please visit www.dri.edu.
Media Contact:
Elyse DeFranco
Elyse.DeFranco@dri.edu
