Dissertation Award
Kay Sung Receives Honorable Mention in UCOWR Dissertation Award
Kay Sung Receives Honorable Mention in UCOWR Dissertation Award
Posted by Jim Stagge on December 20, 2022
Kay Sung, a recent PhD graduate and current postdoc, has been selected as an Honorable Mention in the UCOWR 2023 Outstanding Dissertation Award in Natural Science and Engineering from the University Council on Water Resources (UCOWR).</p>
The submissions were rated on quality and clarity of writing, originality and innovation, scientific merit and technical quality, soundness of research, understanding of previous related research, and contribution to and impact on water resources research.
Dr. Sung received her doctoral degree from the Ohio State University Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering in August 2022 with a dissertation titled “Modeling multi-centennial nonstationary variability in meteorological drought and pluvials: linking paleoclimate, observations, and future projections”.
Kay’s major conceptual innovation was understanding that in a changing climate, the underlying climatology baseline will slowly change, both in terms of the mean (wetter/drier) and the variance (extreme distribution tails). This means that, from a practical standpoint, in a drying climate, what would have been considered a major drought one or two generations ago, may appear more like typical conditions for current or future generations. Using this concept, Kay built a non-stationary SPI (NSPI) model based on recent statistical innovations in multi-dimensional spline regression. She then leveraged this model to quantify how droughts and pluvials have changed across North America throughout the last millennium and how they will likely change by the end of this century.
Formal recognition will be given at the UCOWR Awards Luncheon, held at the Annual Conference, scheduled for June 13-15, 2023, in Fort Collins, CO.
For more information on the UCOWR Dissertation Award, visit https://ucowr.org/awards/ph-d-dissertation-award/.