Stephanie Zick has been selected as a Society of Woman Geographers (SWG) Pruitt Dissertation Fellowship awardee for 2015-2016. As a PhD candidate under the advisement of Dr. Corene Matyas, Stephanie is studying the influence of atmospheric moisture on the structure of landfalling hurricanes, with the goal of improving precipitation forecasts in these dangerous storms. Her dissertation is tentatively titled “Geometric Analysis of Moisture Budgets and Precipitation Structures in U.S. Landfalling Tropical Cyclones.”
The Pruitt award is named in honor of Ms. Evelyn L. Pruitt, whose research with the United States Navy greatly advanced the study of coastal environments and the use of remote sensing in geography. The SWG’s Pruitt Fellowship Program offers fellowships of between $8,000 and $12,000 to women doctoral candidates in the United States and Canada. These fellowships support dissertation research in geography and geographical aspects of related fields.