Lightning Researchers Receive Safety Recognition Awards

by George Zamora

SOCORRO, N.M., January 4, 2002 -- Longtime New Mexico Tech lightning researchers Charles B. Moore and William Rison recently were named winners of the National Lightning Safety Institute's (NLSI) annual lightning safety recognition award in the category of U.S. academia.

The NLSI awards honor individuals and organizations who best exemplify a professional understanding of lightning safety issues and who provide leadership as role models for others involved in lightning safety.

Both Moore and Rison have long been associated with New Mexico Tech's Irving Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research, an internationally recognized research facility for lightning and cloud physics research, located atop the Magdalena Mountains in south-central New Mexico.

The NLSI award citation states that Moore and Rison were chosen as this year's recipients " . . . for their defense of the scientific approach that supposed improvements in lightning protection must be verifiable through the independent third-party peer-reviewed process with supportable technical evidence."

The awards are accompanied by full scholarships of $895 each for recipients to attend NLSI's intensive two-day Lightning Safety Workshop at the organization's headquarters in Louisville, Colo.

Moore, a professor emeritus of atmospheric physics at New Mexico Tech, has worked at the research university's Langmuir Laboratory for more than 35 years.

Rison, a professor of electrical engineering and research physicist at New Mexico Tech, has been a faculty member and researcher at Tech since 1984.