Thomas Kovacs Email & Phone Number

Ypsilanti, Mi, Us

Eastern Michigan University

I am a professor in the Department of Geography and Geology. As a professor, I teach weather, climate, and severe weather courses for earth science, earth science education, and integrated science elementary education majors and mentor undergraduate and graduate students on research. I have published a dozen peer-reviewed journal articles on research specializing in applying satellite remote sensing data for air quality and severe weather applications. In 2020, I published the textbook entitled, “Weather and Climate Forecasting: the scientific method in action”. In 2018, I helped establish the President’s Sustainability Commission at Eastern Michigan University and was the commission’s first chairperson. In 2017, I became vice chair of the new City of Ypsilanti Sustainability Commission. In 2012, I helped establish the Environmental Science and Society (ENVI) program and served as program director for 4 years starting in 2014. I have participated in the MI-STAR program, which is a $5 million dollar grant from the Dow Foundation led by Michigan Tech to test a novel approach to teach the Next Generation Science Standards to middle school students. I also served on the steering committee for the Michigan Water Quality network, a network of university faculty and Michigan state agencies that support water quality research and education in the state of Michigan. Finally, I was a member of Climate Voices, which is a network of climate scientists organized by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) that provide non-partisan conversations about the research findings of the majority of climate scientists and possible ways to address impacts to citizen groups across the United States and Puerto Rico.

I am a tenured faculty member in the Department of Geography and Geology. I teach weather and forecasting for general education students, and weather, climate, and severe weather for earth science, earth science education, and integrated science elementary education majors. I also conduct research on severe weather and air pollution and mentor undergraduate and graduate students' research projects in these topics. Finally, I co-chaired the committee that successfully proposed to create the Interdisciplinary Environmental Science and Society (IESS) undergraduate major program. Currently, I am the program coordinator of the IESS program.

I was lead scientist for the university's NASA Cloud Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) contract from NASA Langley Research Center. As part of this contract I was involved with developing a quid pro quo validation program by building an international network of over a hundred instrumented ground stations that freely exchanged spatially and temporally coincident data. I also led graduate students in atmospheric remote sensing research.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Meteorology

Bachelor Of Science (B.S.), Meteorology