Ned P. Smith Receives Champion of AOS Award
November 22, 2024
The Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) at UW–Madison is thrilled to announce Dr. Ned P. Smith was selected to receive the inaugural Champion of AOS Award.
The purpose of the new award is to recognize alumni, past or present members of the AOS community, and supporters who have made sustained contributions toward improving the community and flourishing of our department, through leadership, initiatives, or philanthropy, in ways that have opened doors for our students, faculty, and staff.
Smith received all three degrees (BS 1965, MS 1967, PhD 1972) from UW–Madison, with his undergraduate and master’s degrees in meteorology (now AOS) and a PhD in oceanography and limnology. As a PhD student, he collected pioneering observations of Lake Superior surface temperatures with AOS Professor Emeritus Bob Ragotzkie.
He then went to the University of Texas Port Aransas Marine Laboratory, working in the estuaries and shallow waters over the continental shelf. From there, he spent the next 30 years as a research oceanographer at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University, where his experimental work in coastal Florida led to advances in air-sea interaction.
In 2015, support from Smith and John and Tashia Morgridge led to the development of two professorships in AOS. Five years later, another Morgridge match inspired Smith to turn those professorships into distinguished chairs: the Ned P. Smith Distinguished Chair in Meteorology and the Ned P. Smith Distinguished Chair in Climatology. The support of these chairs has been transformational for the department, enabling new research and recruitment of top students and staff. Smith’s philanthropy also made an instrumentation fund possible, which was used to acquire advanced instruments for a range of AOS courses.
“The generosity of Ned Smith has allowed our department to grow and thrive in ways we never imagined, “ says Department Chair Ankur Desai. “We are forever thankful for past and ongoing support.”
The award will be formally conferred during the AOS Robock Alumni Reception at the Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society in New Orleans on Tuesday evening, January 14, 2025.