Pieternel Levelt, an associate director of the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) has been selected as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). 

KNAW announced this week that it had selected Levelt and 16 other members from a large number of nominations by expert juries in each scientific and scholarly field. They will be officially installed on September 29.

“The new members – ten women and seven men – don't just excel in their research; they also attach great importance to playing a role in society as scientists,” KNAW stated in a press release.

Levelt has served as the director of NSF NCAR’s Atmospheric Chemistry Observations & Modeling Laboratory since 2021. She specializes in using space-based observation technologies to study air pollution, greenhouse gases, and the ozone layer. Her research provides detailed insights into how pollutants disperse and offers critical data on the state of our ozone layer.

Levelt is the principal investigator for the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s EOS-Aura satellite, and also was the scientific initiator and former PI of the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on the ESA/EU Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite.

In addition to her NSF NCAR position, Levelt serves as professor of remote sensing of Earth's atmosphere at Delft University of Technology and is affiliated with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.

“I am very proud of this,” Levelt said, noting that KNAW membership is for life. “It is a huge honor.”

For more about the honor, see the KNAW press release.

See all News