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By
Jihan Asher
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| Professor
Gregory Jenkins has led research trips to Africa
and the Caribbean to learn more about hurricanes.
(Justin D. Knight) |
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For
Gregory Jenkins, Ph.D., professor in the Department
of Physics and Astronomy and faculty member in the
Howard University Program in Atmospheric Sciences
(HUPAS), a lifetime of asking questions about the
weather has turned into a rich career as a scientist
and a leader and trainer of future scientists. Known
to most of his students as “Dr. J,”
he has taught a variety of courses and led research
trips to Africa and the Caribbean to learn more
about hurricanes.
The West Philadelphia native admits that his fascination
with the weather started during his childhood, when
he says there were many questions for which he could
not find satisfying answers. As an undergraduate
student at Lincoln University, his questions continued
in classes similar to the ones he now teaches at
Howard. |
“I
learned about drying conditions in West Africa
that had begun in the late 1960s and that there
were many hypotheses about why it was occurring
but no definitive answer,” he says. “That
became my passion and the primary reason for going
to graduate school.”
Jenkins continues to study monsoons and other extreme
weather conditions. His research has taken him all
over the world including, most recently, Senegal,
where he led a team as part of a partnership with
NASA and the National Science Foundation. |
| “This
is physics. We don’t hide—we
discover.”
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Through the support of these institutions, Jenkins
travelled to Cape Verde and later to Barbados
where he and his team studied Saharan air layer
outbreaks and tracked the African easterly waves
responsible for the vast majority of intense hurricanes.
He is interested in the physics behind anthropogenic
climate change and in using an increased understanding
of the science to inform policy and cross-cultural
collaboration.
“There
is lots of work to do and I plan to be on the
frontline,” he says. “This is physics.
We don’t hide—we discover.”
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Johnathan
Clark and Yaitza Luna-Cruz were among the students who
participated in the research project this summer. They
tracked and collected data on the ground and from the
air from five Saharan air layer outbreaks and six major
storm systems in order to observe their evolution as
they moved across the Atlantic from West Africa to the
Caribbean.
The students say Jenkins earlier work on the West African
monsoon was one of the primary reasons they chose the
graduate and Ph.D. programs at Howard.
Not every university has this type of research,”
says Luna-Cruz.
Clark agrees, adding that the availability of funding
and scholarships afforded him the opportunity to participate
in his first real study abroad experience.
Jenkins is currently Luna-Cruz’s advisor, an experience
she speaks very highly of: “It’s great!
He keeps the energy up and he is a good scientist.
Jenkin’s
research is backed by a solid academic record. After
completing his doctorate at the University of Michigan,
he served as a post-doctoral fellow at the National
Center for Atmospheric Research. Later, he taught in
the Department of Meteorology at Penn State University.
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| Student
Yaítza Luna-Cruz aboard a DC-8 aircraft,
preparing to better understand how tropical storms
form and develop into major hurricanes. |
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In addition to receiving a Fulbright grant to study in
Senegal, he has been awarded the National Technical Association’s
Technical Achiever of the Year Award (science category),
a National Science Foundation Career Award and a Diversity
Recognition Award during his stay at
Penn State University. He was also selected as a distinguished
alumni member by the College of Engineering at the University
of Michigan in 2007. At Howard, he was director of the
atmospheric science program from 2004 to 2007 and chairman
of the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 2007 to
2010. |
For someone who can list a Fulbright and numerous peer-reviewed
publications among his accomplishments, it is telling
that Jenkins holds “seeing his students succeed
and graduate” and “making contributions to
the field that will help people” in equally high
esteem.
A documentary team is compiling footage, and interviews
of researchers, students and pilots from a multi-agency
hurricane field campaign during August and September is
underway; the completion is expected during the spring
of 2011. |
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