On the 27 June 2017, Fernando Chouza was awarded with the third prize in the category “Dissertations” for the work conducted in the framework of his PhD thesis at the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Bernadett Weinzierl and Dr. Oliver Reitebuch. His work, titled “Saharan dust transport studied by airborne Doppler wind lidar and numerical models”, focuses on the analysis of small and large scale mixing and transport processes affecting the Saharan dust during its transport over the Atlantic ocean with the aim to improve its modeling and thus, reduce the uncertainty associated with its impact on the Earth’s radiative budget calculations. Dr. Chouza is currently a PostDoc in the Aerosol Physics and Environmental Physics Group at the University of Vienna and closely works with DLR. In August 2017, he will move to NASA in California to work on the development of lidar systems for atmospheric ozone monitoring.

The Green Photonics prize is awarded by the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft to outstanding contributions focusing on new solutions that use light for environmental and climate protections.