April 2, 2025
Category: News
Brady Nock, Omid Zandi, Peter Troch
Omid Zandi was this year’s winner of the $2,000 Montgomery Prize at the University of Arizona’s El Día del Agua y la Atmósfera: Research to Resilience. His presentation, titled “UofA-HIPAA V1: University of Arizona High Latitude Infrared-based Precipitation retrieval Algorithm using AVHRR sensor Version,” was recognized as outstanding in the field of hydrology.
Omid is a UA graduate student whose research interests include physically informed machine learning applications in hydrological modeling. He earned an M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Tehran in Iran.
The winner of M&A’s $500 second prize for oral presentation in hydrology is Nathan Strom, for his presentation “Assessing groundwater recharge feasibility across soil textures and environmental factors using a Python-integrated HYDRUS-1D workflow.”
Brady Nock, Nathan Strom, Peter Troch
Nathan is a UA graduate student whose research interests include hydrogeology, ground- and surface-water modeling, and effects of urbanization on an area’s watershed dynamics. He earned a B.S. in Environmental Science at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Brady Nock, Hydrogeologist at Montgomery & Associates, presented the awards to Omid and Nathan, along with Peter Troch, Hydrogeology & Atmospheric Sciences Professor.
This year’s winner of the $2,500 Montgomery Prize for best overall talk at GeoDaze is Madison Tuohy for “The Impact of Dynamic Topography on Lava Facies: A Time-Series Analysis of Fill-and-Spill Processes at Fagradalsfja.”
Madison earned her B.S. in Geophysics from SUNY Binghamton and is currently a Ph.D. student at UA. Her focus is on observing the geomorphology of basaltic lava flows using near surface geophysics and unmanned aircraft systems.
Madison Tuohy, Megan Zivic
Megan Zivic, P.G., RM-SME, Principal Hydrogeologist at M&A, presented the award to Madison.
The El Día and GeoDaze events are held every March during EarthWeek and organized by students from the UA Hydrology & Atmospheric Sciences Department and Geosciences Department, respectively.
M&A, a longtime sponsor of El Día and GeoDaze, is proud to recognize Omid, Nathan, and Madison for their important contributions!
For more information about M&A or our efforts to give back to our communities, please visit our website.
