Michael Davis

SOCORRO, N.M., May 23, 2000 - Michael Davis of Gallup, N.M., received New Mexico Tech's Cramer Award for the male engineering student graduating with the highest grade point average at the university's commencement ceremonies on Saturday, May 13. Davis received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering with highest honors at the ceremony.

Davis is a 1995 graduate of Gallup High School. He is the son of Fred and Toni Davis of Gallup.

Davis earned a perfect 4.0 grade point average at the state-supported research university. Earlier this year, he had been named "Engineering Student of the Year" by the engineering faculty.

Recently, Davis was co-author, with several Tech faculty members, of a paper in EOS, the Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. The paper, published in January 2000, was about the development of a Lightning Mapping Array, which has made it possible to obtain detailed, three-dimensional pictures of lightning inside storms. The system was first used to observe intense lightning activity in severe thunderstorms of the Great Plains. The results showed that lightning may be a valuable diagnostic tool for predicting regions of large hail and tornado formation.

Davis is employed by Hewlett-Packard in Ft. Collins., Colo., where he held an internship last summer.