Rate My Professor Thorwald Stein

Thorwald Stein is an Associate Professor in Clouds in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. He joined the university in 2008 after completing his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Warwick in 2009, with a thesis titled 'Modelling a large system of particles under different rules of merging,' supervised by Sergey Nazarenko. He advanced to Lecturer in 2015 and currently holds leadership roles as Director of the SCENARIO Doctoral Training Partnership and Director of the Crocus Data Lab Accelerator. Stein's research focuses on the life cycles of clouds and convective storms, microphysical and dynamical processes leading to precipitation, and remote sensing of cloud microphysics and dynamics using satellite and ground-based observations. He develops methods to analyze cloud processes for verifying weather and climate models, studies relationships between cloud occurrences and large-scale dynamics, and designs observational strategies to track convective clouds with multiple radars. Stein leads projects such as WesCon (Observing the Evolving Structures of Turbulence, 2023-present), UPFLO (Improving understanding and modelling of convective updrafts and anvil clouds, 2024-present), UNICon (Utilising Emerging Observation Networks in India for the Evaluation of Convective-Scale Processes, 2025-present), CLOUDY TIME (Convective Cloud-Dynamics-Turbulence Interactions with Microphysics and the Environment, 2023-present), and has contributed to GCRF African SWIFT (2017-2021) for improving weather forecasting in Tropical Africa, DYMECS (2011-2014), and DACCIWA (2014-2015).