Andrew Majda, principal investigator of NYU Abu Dhabi's Center for Prototype Climate Modeling (CPCM) and Samuel Morse Professor of Arts and Science at NYU New York's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, has been awarded the Lagrange Prize from the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) for his outstanding scholarship in the field of applied mathematics. The prize is awarded to scientists who have made an exceptional contribution to applied math throughout their careers.

ICIAM lauded Majda's remarkable contributions to the field: "His research, which has merged asymptotic and numerical methods, physical reasoning and modeling, and rigorous mathematical analysis, has had an enormous and long-lasting impact on modern applied mathematics, science and engineering (geophysics, seismology, weather prediction, combustion, and more) and remains the state of the art today."

Majda heads CPCM, a research arm of the NYUAD Institute dedicated to improving computer models that aid in the prediction of future climate.

"I am delighted to receive the 2015 Lagrange Prize from the ICIAM for significant research achievements throughout my career," he said. "And I am especially happy about the award's referring to multi-scale modeling of the tropics and stochastic methods, since one of my main projects at CPCM involves these topics." Majda noted that together with his CPCM colleagues — Senior Scientist Ajaya Ravindran, CPCM Postdoctoral Associate Qiang Deng, and CPCM Advisory Board Member Boualem Khouider — he has used these ideas to "develop novel prototype operational models to significantly improve tropical intraseasonal variability in monsoons and other significant planetary tropical wave patterns."

These new methods are especially important because current models for predicting future climate are deficient in capturing long-range weather patterns with large human impact, Majda added.

• Announcement on ICIAM website
• Recent work from the Center for Prototype Climate Modeling