Physics Student Earns American Geophysical Union Award

MELBOURNE, FLA.—Burcu Kosar, a doctoral student in physics at Florida Institute of technology, has earned an Outstanding Student Paper Award from the American Geophysical Union (AGU) for her presentation at the organization’ s annual fall meeting in San Francisco, Calif.

Kara Smedley of the AGU, said that Kosar’s paper “was recognized as among the best of a strong group of student presenters, which sets an example for your fellow students and the entire AGU membership.”

Kosar’s paper was about her research on sprites. These are large optical flashes produced in Earth‘s upper atmosphere by severe lightning storms and upper atmospheric events.

Burcu is a graduate research assistant in the laboratories of Ningyu Liu, associate professor, and Hamid Rassoul, dean of the College of Science. She earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 2008 and a master’s degree in space sciences from the university in 2010.