Two Northeastern Faculty Named 2027 AMS Fellows
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) announced its 2027 honorees across a variety of weather, climate, and water research areas, including the Class of 2027 AMS Fellows. This year, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s College of Engineering Distinguished Professors Auroop Ganguly and Yang Zhang were both inducted as AMS Fellows.
According to AMS, “those eligible for election to Fellow shall have made outstanding contributions to the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences or their applications during a substantial period of years.”
Auroop Ganguly is an expert in water, weather, and climate sciences, and their engineering implications on watersheds, urban systems, and transportation networks. He addresses problems in sustainability and security with physics-integrated data sciences and machine learning as well as network science and engineering principles. He is a Chief Scientist and a Joint Appointee at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as well as the Director of AI for Climate and Sustainability at Northeastern University’s Institute for Experiential AI, the Principal Investigator of the Sustainability and Data Sciences Laboratory, and gets regular invites to United Nations panels. He is also the co-founder of a series of successful AI, water urban, and climate-focused startups. “I would not have been able to accomplish whatever little I may have without the strong culture of Northeastern University, including at the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) department and the College of Engineering (COE), that nurtures interdisciplinary, translational, and use-inspired research while also encouraging foundational work,” says Ganguly. The CEE chair, Ed Beighley, added that “we are proud of a research culture here at Northeastern CEE that enables Prof. Ganguly to develop convergent research capabilities which has been recognized in engineering (Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers), computer science (Distinguished Member of the Association of Computing Machinery), and now science (Fellow of the American Meteorological Society).”
Yang Zhang is the department’s Associate Chair for Research and an expert in atmospheric and environmental research at the interface of Earth system sciences that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries, including energy, air, water, land, ocean, and human health. Zhang leads Northeastern’s iSUPER impact engine, a cross-college interdisciplinary initiative that brings together academia, industry, and government to co-develop data-driven and AI/ML-based solutions for cities affected by air pollution and its associated adverse health impacts, translating science into societal impact. She was the lead editor who developed the World Meteorological Organization’s training book, Training Materials and Best Practices for Chemical Weather/Air Quality Forecasting (ETR-26). As a member of the WMO’s Global Air Quality Forecasting and Information System (GAFIS) and the Academia Europaea, Zhang extends her research, collaboration, and leadership far beyond the US, connecting research and policy communities worldwide. “Northeastern University’s strong support for deep collaboration and use-inspired research enables me to work at the intersection of human and Earth systems and translate academic discoveries into real-world policies and actions,” says Zhang. Beighley mentioned that “Prof. Zhang is a star who makes us all proud of Northeastern CEE.”
They will be honored from their achievements at the 107th AMS Annual Meeting in Denver in January of 2027.
According to Jerry Hajjar, interim Dean of the College of Engineering, “the deep strength of our Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is showcased by the fact that two of the twenty-eight AMS Class of 2027 Fellows, who are selected from across the world, are from this department.”