Our Mission - Philosophy: I promised myself very early in my career that I would never have something called "Knox Lab" or "Knox Research Group." This should be about the students, not about me with my name splattered all over a web page. I also prefer a first-name basis with students, just like I had with my college professors when I was an undergraduate at UAB. My faculty appointment is teaching-intensive, and I'm the undergraduate coordinator for our atmospheric sciences program. This means my focus is more undergraduate-oriented than that of most research university professors, whose priorities are flipped vs. mine. I work with students, both undergraduates and graduate students, on projects of mutual interest that relate to atmospheric sciences and geography. Most often this involves wind, since my main research focus has been atmospheric dynamics. But the topics have ranged widely as a result, from clear-air turbulence forecasting to tornado debris to summer heat waves, to the impact of a future eruption of Mt. Rainier to Southeastern droughts to climate extremes indices, to flying bounce houses to cold-air damming to geoscience education. I don't usually have grant funding because my work is too applied for some funding agencies and not applied enough for other sources. So my grad students have often been teaching assistants. The silver lining of this arrangement is that, as a TA, the grad students have freedom to research what they want to, not what some funding agency requires. I am especially interested in working with M.S. students, because I think the Master's degree is the "sweet spot" in geography and the atmospheric sciences. I have also been intentional about recruiting students who don't always fit nicely into the cookie cutter of higher education, e.g. women, students from rural areas, neurodiverse students, and people of color. Our Projects Current research projects: Cold-Air Damming Field Campaign Historical Tropical Cyclone Simulations The Effect of Wind on Athletic Events Clear-Air Turbulence Forecasting Quasi-Balanced Dynamics in Anticyclonic Flow Wind-Caused Bounce House Incidents In the News Bounce Houses can be Dangerous, Even in Low Winds
