Michael Prather wins Haagen-Smit Clean Air Award

Michael Prather, professor of Earth system science at UCI, has won the California Air Resources Board’s elite Haagen-Smit Clean Air Award for fundamental contributions to the scientific understanding of the role and impacts of various air pollutants and greenhouse gases. His research group integrates global modeling with satellite measurements of the composition and chemistry of our atmosphere. A founding faculty member of UCI’s Department of Earth System Science, Prather served as the Fred Kavli Chair from 2002 to 2013. He has been active in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments since 1992 and participated in the scoping and authoring of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report. As a Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. State Department, Prather worked with the policy and intelligence communities on emerging issues in science and the environment. He’s a member of the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. California’s premier air quality award is named for the late Arie Haagen-Smit, known as the father of air pollution science and control. The annual award recognizes those who continue his legacy through perseverance, leadership and innovation, furthering public health.