Jenni L. Evans

Jenni Louise Evans (March 3, 1962 – April 3, 2025) was an Australian-born American meteorologist who was professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, where she served as director of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS, formerly known as the Institute for CyberScience). She was a past president of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and was elected a fellow of the AMS in 2010. In 2019, she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Early life and education Born and raised in Melbourne, Evans attended Avila College, a Catholic day school for girls located in Mount Waverley, a suburb of Melbourne. Prior to her PhD, she worked on fluid dynamics and observations of the planetary boundary layer. During her PhD, Evans visited the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and the supercomputing group at NASA Ames in 1987 and 1988. She returned to Monash for her doctoral studies and earned her PhD in 1990, then joined CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere. In 2017 she was appointed Director of the Institute of CyberScience, which, in 2019, was renamed the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences. Her research considered the genesis and decay of tropical cyclones, including the extratropical transition and landfall. She investigated the impact of climate change on tropical cyclones. She developed statistical methodologies for forecasts of tropical cyclones and a metric to for cyclogenesis activity in climate change situations.

Evans described hurricanes as one of the last remaining weather systems that cannot be predicted. She was a member of an interdisciplinary team charged with reviewing catastrophic risk models used for setting hurricane insurance rates in Florida. Evans contributed her expertise in natural disasters and Ballora his background in music, and together they converted data that is typically in charts or graphs into music.

In 2019, Evans participated in a National Science Foundation grant to establish the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub.

Academic service Whilst serving on the United States Army Science Team, Evans was involved with the relocation of their tropical test facility to Panama. Evans was elected President of American Meteorological Society (AMS) in 2019, which was the 100th year of the AMS.

Awards and honours Her awards and honours include;

1995 National Science Foundation CAREER Award 2013 American Geophysical Union Editors Award 2019 Elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Selected publications Her publications include;

Evans had written for The Conversation.

Personal life and death Evans married Bruce Edward Lord, a professor of statistics at Penn State, in 2005.

The ICDS announced Evans' death on April 4, 2025, noting that "she passed away on Thursday, April 3, 2025, leaving behind a legacy of groundbreaking research and dedicated service to the scientific community." She died at her home in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, at the age of 63.