The European Severe Storms Laboratory bi-annually presents two awards to outstanding scientists:

The “Nikolai Dotzek Award” in the past years quickly became the most prestigious award in the global severe weather research community.

Nikolai Dotzek Award trophy, (c) Alois M. Holzer, ESSL

Nikolai Dotzek Awardee 2017: Dr. Joshua Wurman. He has been given the award for a) his work on radar techniques including bistatic radar and mobile radars, b) his groundbreaking work in developing the Doppler-on-Wheels radars that were first operated in the large field program VORTEX in the mid 1990’s, c) the outstanding research he has done with the Doppler-on-Wheels and the work which supervised: This research has revealed the structure of flow in tornadoes in extreme detail; it has also contributed to important new insight into the immediate environment of tornadoes, and into other weather phenomena that the DoWs have scanned around the world. The scientific community owes a lot to Dr. Josh Wurman for creating an abundance of research opportunities with the Doppler-on-Wheels data, and for having inspired many future researchers around the world.

Nikolai Dotzek Award list and detailed information (PDF)

The “Heino Tooming Award” has the longest tradition and fosters European collaboration.

Tooming Award list and detailed information (PDF)

Tooming Awardees 2017: Gatzen, Christoph; Kreitz, Michaël; Leprince, Sébastien; Schielicke, Lisa; Rabrenović, Maja; Enno, Sven-Eric: Combined analysis of severe convective wind gusts in European data sets.

In addition at the ECSS outstanding posters, oral presentations and student contributions are awarded.

List of ECSS awards (PDF)

The ECSS awardees 2017:

Best Oral Presentation Jury Award: Chernokulsky, Alexander (holding the deed); Kurgansky, Michael; Mokhov, Igor; Selezneva, Evgeniya; Shikhov, Andrey; Azhigov, Igor; Zakharchenko, Denis; Antonescu, Bogdan; Kühne, Thilo. The modern climatology of Northern Eurasia tornadoes and waterspouts

Best Poster Jury Award: Onomura, Shiho; Kusunoki, Kenichi; Inoue, Hanako; Ishitsu, Naoki; Arai, Ken-ichiro; Fujiwara, Chusei
Statistical features of near-ground tornadic vortices in comparison with radar-observed vortices aloft (awardee not present in photo, instead ESSL Executive Board members Bogdan Antonescu, Kathrin Riemann-Campe and Pieter Groenemeijer, from left to right)

Best Oral Presentation Audience Award: Matthew Parker (holding the deed) – What have we learned about high-shear low-CAPE severe weather? A review.

Best Poster Audience Award: Rädler, Anja (holding the deed), T.; Pucik, Tomas; Groenemeijer, Pieter; Tijssen, Lars
Comparison between European and US severe convective weather environments