Riehl and Silva Dias 2025 awards announced

Each spring, our department awards the Herbert Riehl Memorial Award and the Maria Silva Dias Award to — typically two — students nominated by their advisers for outstanding research. This year, three students received awards because the nominees were so strong.

Congratulations to Camille Mavis, who won the Riehl Award for an outstanding technical manuscript by a student. The award is named in honor of department founder Herbert Riehl. Mavis researched ice nuclei generation in Arctic melt ponds. Mavis’ paper, with twenty coauthors, “Investing meltwater as a local source of ice nucleating particles in the central Arctic summer” is under review for Environmental Science & Technology. Mavis was co-advised and co-nominated by University Distinguished Professor Sonia Kreidenweis and Research Scientist Jessie Creamean.

Nicole June and Gabrielle Leung both won the Silva Dias award for outstanding research by a Ph.D student. The Silva Dias Award is given in recognition of outstanding research. Previously known as the Alumni Award, through a student-led initiative it was re-named for alumna Maria Silva Dias. Silva Dias, the department’s first woman Ph.D. graduate.

June, advised by Professor Jeffrey Pierce, worked on the effects of wildfire smoke injection height on climate with seventeen collaborators. Her manuscript, “Look Within: Intraplume differences on smoke aeorosol aging driven by concentration gradients,” was published in Feb. 2025 in JGR Atmospheres. 

Leung shared an insightful analysis of how tropical deforestation affects cloudiness. She published “Deforestation‐driven increases in shallow clouds are greatest in drier, low‐aerosol regions of Southeast Asia” in Geophysical Research Letters in May 2024 with University Distinguished Professor Susan van den Heever and Research Scientist Leah Grant.

Main photo (left to right): Kreidenweis, Mavis, June, Pierce, Leung, and Grant | Additional photos from the 2025 department celebration