Dr. George Matheou Receives Prestigious NSF CAREER Award

Dr. George Matheou, assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering and member of UConn’s Center for Clean Energy Engineering, was one of 10 recipients from the University of Connecticut, who received this year’s NSF CAREER award.  

Dr. Matheou’s award is titled “CAREER: Understanding Low-Cloud Feedbacks Using Large-Eddy Simulation of Spatially Developing Cloud Transitions” and was awarded $425,395 by NSF.  In this project, Dr. Matheou’s education and outreach components use artistic expression to promote curiosity, engagement, creativity and innovation.  This project will culminate with a major exhibit at the William Benton Museum of Art in collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Visualization Services and Research (VisLab) and UConn’s Department of Art and Art History.  Through this program, students will engage in research enhanced by the use of images and movies to gain an understanding into atmospheric physics for weather forecasting and climate projections.

Being future-focused on research and adding an artistic approach to teaching, this NSF award will aid Dr. Matheou in pursuing his research interest as well as help build the skills that will make students more effective and valuable in their future careers.

Figure 8: Weather-inspired art. Photographs from our visit to the art class at Parish Hill Middle School. Students created marble art taking inspiration from weather patterns: Marble paint and water in the atmosphere behave similarly with negligible horizontal mixing.

Figure 8: Weather-inspired art. Photographs from our visit to the art class at Parish Hill Middle School.
Students created marble art taking inspiration from weather patterns: Marble paint and water in the
atmosphere behave similarly with negligible horizontal mixing.