Leonard Kofitse Amekudzi

Leonard Kofitse Amekudzi is a Professor of Atmospheric and Climate Science in the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science, Faculty of Physical and Computational Sciences and Provost of the College of Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. As an atmospheric and climate scientist, Professor Leonard Amekudzi has over twenty years of experience teaching, conducting research, providing community service, and mentoring.  Professor Amekudzi hails from Tegbi, in the Keta Municipality of the Volta Region. His parents are Mr Trot Wisdom Amekudzi and Madam Juliana Kokui Amevor-Dumashie, all of the blessed memory. He is the seventh born of ten children and the fourth son of his parents. He started his basic school at the Ho-Bankoe Roman Catholic Boys Primary School and continued his middle school at Ho-Kpodzi Evangelical Presbyterian (E.P.) Middle II School. He had his Secondary O'Level at Awudome Secondary School, Tsito, Volta Region and A'Level at St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School, Cantonments, Accra. After sixth form, Professor Amekudzi had his national service at Awudome Senior High School, where he served as a Physics and General Science teacher. Additionally, as a former member of the school football team, he served as assistant coach to the school football team. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in Physics with a Diploma in Education and Master of Philosophy in Theoretical Physics from the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Ghana, in 1997 and 2001, respectively, and PhD from the University of Bremen, Germany, in 2005. EARLY CAREER EXPERIENCE Professor Amekudzi did his teaching internship at Keta Secondary Technical School between 1995 – 1997. He served as a Teaching Assistant in the 1997/98 academic year at the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, UCC and at the same time served as a part-time Mathematics Teacher at St. Augustine's College, Cape Coast. He was then employed by Ghana Education Service (GES) as a Physics Teacher at Mfantsipim School. He also served as the Brilliant/National Science and Maths Quiz trainer and was part of the team that won the 1999 competition for the school. Prof. Amekudzi 1998 participated in the eight-week Laboratory and Instrumentation Training of Science Teachers organized by GES at PRESEC, Legon. Following his training, he served as the Science Resources person in the Physics laboratory. He was awarded the best Early Career Science Teacher during the "School's Speech and Prize Giving Day" in 1999 for his exceptional teaching skills and dedication to work. In September 2001, Professor Amekudzi left Ghana for Germany for further studies. After completing a one-year Master Science course work at the Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP), Faculty of Physics and Electrical Engineering, University of Bremen, Germany, he was awarded the ENVISAT (Environmental Satellite) Doctoral Fellowship by the European Space Agency (ESA). He obtained his Doctor of Natural Science Degree (Dr. rer. nat) in Atmospheric Physics, Satellite Remote Sensing and Climate Science with "Magna Cum Laude" from the University of Bremen, Germany, in 2005. Professor Amekudzi accepted an offer and worked with the Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry research group in IUP at the University of Bremen as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist. He was involved in retrieving atmospheric trace gas information from Occultation and Limb observations under the ENVISAT's SCIAMACHY Limb and Occultation Validation (SCILOV) project. Notable among his research in Germany is the first retrieval of Nitrate radical (NO3) from space-borne from Lunar Occultation measurement, O3 and NO2 from Occultation (solar and Lunar) and Limb observation and photochemical correction modelling of NO2. He also represented his institute in the international validation of space-borne NO2 and NO from Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry experiments published in the Journal of Physics and Chemistry of the Atmosphere. He also presented his research findings at several international conferences, including AGU, EGU, COSPAR, GPD, and other ESA conferences, and he published his work in reputable journals in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.  ACADEMIC AND ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCEProfessor Amekudzi was appointed a Lecturer for the Meteorology and Climate Science Programme in the Department of Physics in May 2008. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer on 1st October 2009, Associate Professor in August 2015, and Professor in August 2020. His specialization areas include Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry, Ocean and Atmospheric Dynamics, Satellite Remote Sensing and Climatology. He served as the Coordinator for the Meteorology and Climate Science Programme, held the Head of the Physics Department position, and is currently the Provost of the College of Science (2019 to date). He is a Fellow of the Independence Hall, KNUST. Professor Amekudzi is a member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), European Geophysical Union, Institute of Physics (IOP), UK, the Committee on Advances in Space Research (COSPAR) and the Ghana Science Association (GSA). He was the chairperson for the 8th KNUST Summer School and the Chairman of the Second Ewiem Nimdie Summer School and the SWIFT Summer School on Tropical Meteorology in 2010 and 2019, respectively. He has also chaired several local and national GSA conferences.  Professor Amekudzi was the Chairman of the College of Science Laboratory Committee and the Chairman of the University Audio Visual Committee. He is a member of the Specialized Committee of the Ghana National Commission for UNESCO and was a member of the University Industrial Tracer and Feedback Committee. He was a Technical Working Group (TWG) member of the National Climate Change Early Warning Group and a member of the Policy on Teaching and Learning Committee. Professor Amekudzi has over 19 years of experience in teaching at the university and has lectured several undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the Departments of Physics, and Meteorology and Climate Science. The courses he has taught include Properties of Matter, Statistical Mechanics, Topics in Classical and Quantum Mechanics, Theory of Fields and Topics in Advanced Quantum Mechanics. The courses in Meteorology and Climate Science he taught include Programming with FORTRAN, Atmospheric and Ocean Dynamics, Atmospheric Physics, Tropical Climatology, Biometeorology and Human Health, Prediction of Tropical Weather Systems, and Advanced Atmospheric Dynamics. Professor Amekudzi was also a service lecturer for the Applied Meteorology course in the Aerospace Engineering programme at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, KNUST. He lectures undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the new Meteorology and Climate Science Department. A department, he played a significant role in its establishment and served as a pioneer lecturer and its first full professor. Professor Amekudzi has supervised over Eighty (80) undergraduate research projects, eighteen (18) master's (MPhil) theses and Twenty-two (22) PhD theses. He mentors senior members at the Meteorology and Climate Science Department and other Departments at KNUST. He has been a member of the Local Advisory Board of the WASCAL Climate Change and Land Use (CCLU) graduate programme in the Department of Civil Engineering, KNUST. He is a lead supervisor for six (6) ongoing PhD students at KNUST. RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS, GRANTS AND PUBLICATIONS Prof Amekudzi's key research areas include Atmospheric Physics, Tropical and Satellite Meteorology, Climatology and Data Science. He was a Regular Research Fellow at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Italy between 2011 and 2016. Professor Amekudzi has over 90 peer-reviewed publications in highly reputable journals and over 120 conference papers. Besides, Professor Amekudzi has contributed to ten (10) policy briefs, six (6) book chapters, four(4) books and thirty (30) Technical reports. His publication covers Meteorology (Nowcasting, Synoptic and Seasonal forecasting), Atmospheric Remote Sensing, climate science, and its impacts, such as health, agriculture, Energy, land use/cover, flooding and water resources. Professor Amekudzi is highly visible on international bibliometric databases such as ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and Scopus. He has an H-index of 33, an i10-index of 71, and 3290 citations on Google Scholar. He has 1,908 people interested in his research, with over 40,000 reads in ResearchGate. According to the AD Scientific Index 2024, Professor Amekudzi is the best Atmospheric Physicist in Ghana, the fourth-ranked Natural Scientist in KNUST and the 8th-ranked in Ghana.  Prof Amekudzi has worked extensively with different research projects globally. He has been a Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-PI for many projects with total grants of over twenty Million Dollars ($20,000,000.00). He has been an investigator on the following research-collaborated projects - Quantifying Weather and Climate Impacts on Health in Developing Countries (QWeCI), Building Stronger Universities (BSU), West Africa Science Service Center for Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), Dynamic-Aerosol-Chemistry-Cloud interactions in West Africa (DACCIWA) and International Development Research Center-Climate Change Adaptation Research and Training Capacity for Development (IDRC-CCARTCD), Global Challenge Research Fund Africa Science for Weather Information and Forecasting Techniques (GCRF African SWIFT), the Current and Future Risks of Urban and Rural Flooding in West Africa- An Integrated Analysis and Ecosystem-Based Solutions (FURILOOD), Green House Gas Emissions and Mitigation Options under Climate and Land-use Change in West Africa a Concerted Regional Modelling and assessment (CONCERT). Wellcome Trust funded a project on Climate change's impact on mortality in Ghana and EU-funded AlBATROSS ( Advancing Knowledge for Long-Term Benefits and Climate Adaptation through Holistic Climate Service and Nature-based Solutions). Professor Amekudzi has also served as an external examiner for the postgraduate programme at the Institute of Environment and Sanitation, UG, Ghana. He was an external examiner and Moderator for the Department of Applied Physics at UDS. He is a visiting professor at the Africa Centre of Excellence in Coastal Resilience (ACECoR), UCC and was part of the Oceanography and Limnology syllabus development for ACECoR. He thus gives the Physical Dynamics of Ocean Lectures at ACECoR. He also serves as an international advisory board member and visiting professor for the WASCAL PhD programme at the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin, where he teaches applied meteorology. He is also an international advisory board member at the Federal University of Technology, Minna (FUT-Minna), Nigeria, and lectures Micrometeorology. Professor Amekudzi was part of the three-person committee that developed the Master of Climate Informatics Programme run at the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He is also an external examiner for the WASCAL Meteorology and Climate Science programme at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUT-Akure), Nigeria. Prof Amekudzi has been an external examiner and co-supervisor for the Climate and Environmental Science PhD programme at the Department of Environmental Science, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia and the University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa, since 2017.   Professor Amekudzi has mentored national and international early career researchers. He has hosted a young researcher from the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NiMET) on the SWIFT academic industrial exchange programme. He hosted and mentored another Postdoctoral fellow from Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Nigeria, on the Climate Impact Research Capacity and Leadership Enhancement in Sub-Saharan Africa (CIRCLE) Programme. He also mentored a DAAD-funded Postdoctoral fellow from the University of Yaounde, Cameroon and an AIMS-funded Postdoctoral fellow from the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin. He has also hosted two European PhD students working in Tropical Meteorology from the University of Reading, UK and the University of Cantabria, Spain. Also, he was an external examiner for Atmospheric science PhD theses from the Institute of Environmental Physics, Grenoble, France and the University of Cantabria.  COMMUNITY SERVICE AND OTHER ENGAGEMENTS Professor Amekudzi is a lead consultant for seven different Climate and Environmental projects in Ghana. These include Two series of CleanAir-funded Air quality and pollution prevention Schools for Ghana and West Africa, UNDP project on Ghana Climate projection for Health Sector Response, the GIZ Project on Development and Implementation of Capacity Building Measures for Staff of NADMO on Climate Disaster Risk Management, USAID/UCC climate change and adaptation workshops in Cape Coast in 2016 and 2017 and Climate Change Consultant for Regional Institute of Population Studies (RIPS), 2013 – 2016.  Professor Amekudzi was a resource person, speaker and facilitator for several climate change workshops in Ghana and other parts of Africa, including the CCARTCD Climate Change Modelling Short Course at the University of Ghana (2013) and the PhD course in Climate Change Processes Mitigation and Adaptation, BSU I Common Course, KNUST- Kumasi. He was the Plenary Speaker at the Continental Conference on the theme "Enabling Informed Decision and Policy Making for Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa: Providing Evidence and Fostering Research Policy Linkages to Support Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa" in Nairobi, Kenya (2015). He was a Keynote Speaker at the "Symposium on Environment and Health, Climate Change in the Context of UV Radiation", in South Africa, (2015), a workshop organized and hosted by the South Africa Academic of Arts and Science. He has also delivered his Professorial Inaugural Lecture on Cracking the Climate Change Code: The Sub-Saharan African Revolution. He was involved in developing science curriculums for primary schools in Ghana. He served as the lead reviewer for the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), overseeing the evaluation of Meteorology and Climate-related programmes throughout the country. He has been a reviewer for Royal Meteorology Society Journals, EGU, AGU, MDPI SAGE and others. Professor Amekudzi was one of the reviewers of the World Meteorology Forecasters handbook. He is a Governing Board Member of the TCC-UNESCO Category II Center of Excellence. He is also the governing board member of Awudome Senior High School (AWUSCO) and holds the position of National President of the Old AWUSCO Students Association (OSUA). He is actively engaged in poultry farming and is currently the CEO of Trotmemo Farms Ltd. He was recognized as the Best Poultry Farmer at the Ho Municipal in 2014.  FAMILY Professor Leonard Amekudzi is married to Mrs. Comfort Elikplim Amekudzi, a Chartered Accountant currently serving as the Bursar of Independence Hall, KNUST. The couple has been blessed with three children, all boys. Their names are Dzidzornu Godfred, who holds a BSC Degree in Civil Engineering, Delali Jeffery, who is a second year Law student at KNUST, and Etumte Cyril Besah, who is a first year student in Computer Engineering. Professor Amekudzi is the guardian to numerous nephews and nieces, and he has generously established two bursaries dedicated to supporting postgraduate training in meteorology and climate science, as well as other related disciplines. He enjoys watching football, playing table tennis, and listening to cool gospel music. He is a practising Christian and fellowships at Living Waters Assemblies of God church.