NDPTC Science Director, Dr. Bruce Houghton Receives Board of Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Research Award.

Posted on May 19, 2021

The UH Board of Regents’ and President’s awards recognize the dedication and service of UH Mānoa faculty, staff, and students committed to enhancing the University’s mission of excellence.

The Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Research is awarded by the University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents in recognition of scholarly contributions that expand the boundaries of knowledge and enrich the lives of students and the community.

Bruce F. Houghton is the Gordon A. Macdonald Professor of volcanology in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. He is also Hawaiʻi’s state volcanologist and science director for the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center at UH Mānoa. His research specialty, and that of his students and postdoctoral fellows, is the eruption dynamics of explosive eruptions, particularly at Kīlauea and Stromboli volcanoes.

Houghton played a leading role in collaboration with the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in the science response during the 2018 eruption of Kīlauea. He works across the interface between volcanoes and society, collaborating with world leading disaster psychologists and sociologists. He has published 267 papers in international journals, including four papers in Nature in the first four months of 2021, and received 13,700 citations. Described by his colleagues as a “giant of volcanology,” Houghton was a 2017 recipient of the highest accolade from the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior, the Thorarinsson Medal, as only the ninth recipient of the medal in the 100-year history of the association.

To read the full story on UH News, go to https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2021/05/19/regents-medal-research-2021/