SONJA BEHNKE -- NOMINATION FROM PAUL KREHBIEL Honorary Degrees and Awards Committee: It is with great pleasure that I nominate Sonja Behnke for the 2014 Langmuir Award. Attached is a copy of the paper that she wrote on her study of lightning and electrification observations of the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption in Iceland. The paper, entitled "The 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull: Lightning and plume charge structure", has recently been published in Journal Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. The paper is based on her Ph.D. studies of volcanic lightning and electrification in both the 2009 Alaskan Redoubt and 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruptions in Iceland. Sonja received her Ph.D. degree last year (June 2013). She was an undergraduate student in Physics while I was teaching, receiving her B.Sc. degree in 2003. She was a student worker in our lightning research Laboratory beginning in her sophomore year and continued doing so for a year after graduating, conducting an study and being the lead author on an important paper concerning the initial development of intracloud lightning discharges. After brief stints in industry and teaching she returned to Tech in 2007 as a graduate student in Physics. She was actively involved in deploying lightning mapping equipment in Alaska ahead of the 2009 sequence of Redoubt eruptions, and then in Iceland during the Eyjafjallajökull eruptions. Equally importantly, working with advisor Ronald Thomas, she played a leading role in analyzing the volcanic lightning observations and in writing several papers for the two studies, the most recent of which is the basis for her nomination. During her graduate studies, she was the receipient of several best student presentation awards at national AGU and AMS conferences. Sonja is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of South Florida with Steven McNutt, formerly a colleague at the Alaskan Volcano Observatory and co-author of the Redoubt volcanic papers. Like her Redoubt paper, the Eyjafjallajökull paper is a major work that puts her solidly in the forefront nationally and internationally of volcanic lightning studies. The paper is almost entirely the product of her own work and initiative, and an example of the thoroughness and attention to detail of her studies. She is highly deserving of the Langmuir Award. Paul Krehbiel Professor of Physics