Gerald Grams, Ph.D.

Associate Director, Earth Systems Science Program
Director, REU Site: Earth Systems Science at Clark Atlanta University
Professor, Department of Physics

Education:
B.S. 1960 Mankato State College Mathematics and Physics
Ph.D. 1966 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Meteorology

Dr. Grams is the Associate Director of the Earth System Science Program. He serves as Professor of Physics at CAU and has been a Principal Research Scientist for CAU’s Research Center for Science and Technology since 1993. As part of the Earth System Science program, he teaches an undergraduate course “Introduction to Earth System Science” and a graduate course “Introduction to Atmospheric Physics”. He is also working on the development of three of the new undergraduate physics courses sponsored by the PAIR program (Atmospheric Aerosols, Radiation Transfer and Passive Remote Sensing, and Numerical Methods in Earth System Science). The author or co-author of over 40 publications on aerosol optical properties, on the effect of atmospheric aerosols on the propagation of electromagnetic radiation and on instrumentation or data analysis techniques for determining aerosol optical properties, he was named a Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 1976 for pioneering work on the development of lidar systems for detecting and measuring the optical properties of atmospheric aerosol particles. Past Chairman of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Committee on Laser Atmospheric Studies, he has served on the AMS Board on Women and Minorities and as a member of the AMS committee on Meteorological Aspects of Air Pollution; he is accredited as a Certified Consulting Meteorologist by the AMS. He served for 6 years as the Geosciences Representative on the Steering Committee of the National Research Council's Advisory Committee for U. S. Army Basic Research. In addition to NASA service as Expert, Consultant and Advisor for programs in Environmental Quality, Weather and Climate, he was a member of NASA Experiment Teams for the Stratospheric Aerosol Experiment (SAM II) sensor on the Nimbus-7 satellite, the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) sensor on the AEM-B satellite, the SAGE II sensor on the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) mission, and the nephelometer experiment for measuring properties of aerosols and clouds on the Jupiter Galileo Orbiter-Probe mission for NASA. He has served on NSF review panels for Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) proposals and is currently an adjunct member of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Science Team for the U. S. Department of Energy.

Dr. Grams received a Ph. D. in Meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1966 and a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Physics from Mankato State College, Mankato, Minnesota, in 1960. He was a Professor of Atmospheric Physics in the School of Geophysical Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, from 1977 to 1990; a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado from 1970 to 1977l and an Aerospace Technologist (Aeronomy) at the NASA Electronics Research Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1967 to 1970. He also served as a Research Affiliate at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, Cambridge, Massachusetts and a Lecturer in Mathematics at University College, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts from 1967 to 1970. Before completing his Ph. D. at MIT, he served as a Research Assistant in the MIT Department of Meteorology from1964 to 1966, a Ford Foundation Fellow in the MIT Dept. of Meteorology from 1961 to 1964, an Atmospheric Physicist in the Meteorology Laboratory, Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, in the summer of Summer 1962, and a Teacher at St. Peter High School, St. Peter, Minnesota, from 1960 to 1961.