Congratulations to PAOC's Daniel D. B. Koll, who has been awarded an Outstanding Student Paper Awards (OSPA) for his poster at the 49th Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) held in San Francisco in December. The event is the world’s largest Earth and space science meeting, bringing together more than 25,000 scientists to share their work through about 22,000 poster presentations and invited talks.
Koll is a postdoctoral fellow working in the Cronin group at MIT’s Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate (PAOC) with a MIT Kavli Institute affiliation. He received an OSPA in planetary sciences for “Interpreting atmospheric circulations of rocky exoplanets as heat engines”. Koll’s area of expertise is the study of exoplanet atmospheres and Earth’s “exotic” past climate. He’s particularly interested in the unusual climates of tidally locked planets, which offer a unique opportunity over the coming few years for testing climate theories against astronomical observations. In his doctoral thesis, Koll focused on the atmospheres of rocky planets around M-stars and extended theories of atmospheric dynamics that were developed for Earth to these exotic atmospheres. At MIT, he hopes to apply this to understanding how these dynamics shape the habitability of terrestrial planets.
Other recipients from MIT included Amanda Giang, Alison Hoyt, Sarah Fletcher and Hannah Mark.