James Belanger has been awarded the Natural Hazards Focus Group Award for Graduate Research, given annually to a recent Ph.D. recipient for outstanding contributions to natural hazards research. Belanger’s thesis is entitled “Predictability and prediction of tropical cyclones on daily to interannual time scales.” He gave an invited talk and was formally presented with the award at the 2012 AGU Fall Meeting, held 3–7 December in San Francisco, Calif.
James received his B.S. in Earth and atmospheric sciences from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 2003. After spending a year at the State University of New York at Albany, under the instruction of John Molinari, James returned to the Georgia Institute of Technology and completed his Ph.D. in atmospheric dynamics under the supervision of Judith Curry in August 2012. His research interests include tornadoes, hurricanes, and atmospheric predictability.