Strong Record of Research
The doctoral program in atmospheric sciences was born in 2007 and has grown to include 12 faculty in five departments. The first PhD student from the program graduated in 2013. Since then, another three PhD students have graduated—showing the program’s rapid growth. It currently enrolls 12 PhD students and is rapidly expanding.
Before atmospheric science became its own program, there was more than 20 years of atmospheric science research taking place across campus in several departments (physics, geology, civil, environmental, and geospatial engineering, chemistry, and forestry). Research was focused on radar remote sensing, lake-atmosphere interaction and transport, atmospheric chemistry in the Polar Regions, and volcanology.
The current program brings together interdisciplinary expertise, and many new areas, under a single umbrella, affording students an interdepartmental education while maintaining a strong focus on different sub-fields of atmospheric research.
Since the program sprang from the effort of several strongly research oriented scientists on campus, students enrolled in the program can access unique facilities, such as:
- Cloud Chamber,
- ACMAL facility,
- Pico Mountain Observatory, and
- highly instrumented laboratories and computational facilities across campus including:
- mass spectrometers,
- optical spectrometers,
- differential absorption spectrometers,
- holographic cloud particle systems,
- several specific aerosol and gases analysis and monitoring instrumentation, and
- high-performance computing facilities.
The program is strongly focused on research with core coursework that focuses on fundamentals and with broad flexibility in elective courses. Students have often the opportunity to work through research assistantships.
Applying to the Atmospheric Sciences Doctoral Program
Follow the application requirements for this program and for the Michigan Tech Graduate School. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the program, be sure to review the research interests of our faculty before writing a Statement of Purpose. We will suggest a home department based on your interests and background.
Immediately after you have completed submission of your application through the Graduate School, you may submit evidence of writing ability to us at atmgrad@mtu.edu. If you have authored one or more refereed journal articles, you may submit those. Otherwise, you may submit one report on which you were the sole author. This step is optional, but recommended.