Dr. Ali Tokay
Professor · Non-Tenure Track
Department of Geography & Environmental Systems Office of Professional Programs
About
Dr. Tokay is an atmospheric scientist and meteorological engineering by training and conducted numerous field campaigns under the umbrella of NASA’s precipitation measurement mission. Dr. Tokay published 50+ peer-reviewed journals and served as a anonymous reviewer for 20+ different journals and NASA, NSF, and DOE proposals. Dr. Tokay was the co-chair of the 34th American Meteorological Society (AMS) radar meteorology conference and co-chair of 2016 European conference on radar meteorology and hydrology. He was the chair of AMS radar meteorology committee (2016-2020) and is associate editor of Journal Hydrometeorology. Dr. Tokay is a member of the Center for Space Sciences and Technology (CRESST II) consortium promotion review committee. Dr. Tokay is a recipient of the 2025 UMBC Research Faculty Excellence award, 2018 Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 2026 Journal of Hydrometeorology Editor's awards.Research interests
Dr. Tokay focuses on precipitation measurements including microphysics, spatial variability, and measurement accuracy. Dr. Tokay was a principal investigator during a series of field campaigns under NASA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and Global Precipitation Measurement Mission. He is an associate member of NASA Precipitation Science Team.Teaching interests
Weather and Climate (Geography and Environmental Systems 311). This class includes fundamentals of atmospheric processes including radiative transfer, cloud physics, large and meso-scale phenomena, severe weather, and weather forecasting. Dr. Tokay was an advisor/co-advisor of ten MS and PhD. students. He also mentored 30+ summer undergraduate and graduate interns.Education
- Ph D, Atmospheric Sciences — University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1993)
- MS, Atmospheric Sciences — Saint Louis University (1988)
- BS, Meteorological Engineering — Istanbul Technical University (1984)