Jenni L. Evans

Jenni Evans, professor emerita of meteorology and atmospheric science and director emerita of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, was a global leader in the field of meteorology. Her research was organized around the themes of tropical cyclones, tropical convection and climate change. Much of her work involved forecasting and predicting tropical cyclones using numerical modeling and advanced computational techniques. She was essential in developing the Cyclone Phase Space framework, a tool now standard in operational tropical cyclone forecasting.

Evans served in many leadership positions during her tenure at the University. She was appointed interim director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute in 2013, acting director of the Institute of Energy and the Environment (IEE) from 2014 to 2015 and interim director of the Institute for CyberScience (ICS) in 2016. She was then appointed director of ICS, which was renamed the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS), where she held that position until retiring in 2024. She died on April 3, 2025.