Cathy May

Cathy May's head is in the clouds.

"When I was little, I loved the weather," she said. "I would stay up and watch the 10:17 weather report and then go to sleep. My senior project in high school was a report on broadcast meteorology. I was hooked."

After a two-year detour into architectural engineering, the Omaha, Neb. native switched majors to focus on her passion: meteorology. Since then, she has discovered that the sky is not the limit when it comes to academic opportunities in her field.

This year and next, she will participate in VORTEX2, the largest and most ambitious effort ever made to understand tornados. During phase one of the project, more than 100 scientists from 40 universities will gather data throughout Tornado Alley. May's team will launch unmanned aircrafts into supercell storms in Western Nebraska, and then monitor their progress from vehicles on the ground.

Over her summer vacation, May will also travel to Washington, DC, for an internship with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Observatory. She will work closely with research scientist Charles Ichoku, analyzing images taken from space of wildfires in California.

When she returns to Nebraska, May will resume a year-long research project for which she received a NASA Nebraska Space Grant. The grant's $5,000 stipend funds her research on air pollution in China, which is based on both ground and aerial views of that country. May has already collected much of her data, and in the coming months will focus on analysis. She is working closely with Jun Wang, assistant professor of geosciences, who studies pollution throughout East Asia.

May is grateful for the support of faculty at UNL, including Wang, who have made possible this trio of unique research opportunities.

"There are a lot of great professors in the meteorology department who truly care about their students and want to give us the best opportunities," she said.

And after she graduates? Another summer of storm chasing with VORTEX2 and then graduate school... somewhere. She's got a few other projects to finish before she makes that decision.