On August 14th, 2025, Cassie O'Connor a 2nd year PhD student of Dr. Jennifer Collins in the School of Geosciences, gave a talk as part of the Pint of Science series at New World Brewery. Each month, they invite 3 speakers from a wide variety of fields to discuss research and topics in the field. Cassie gave a talk titled "Hurricanes Helene and Milton: Lessons Learned from Weathering the Storm."
Cassie O'Connor presenting at Pints of Science
She discussed some of the meteorological aspects, as well as records broken, from Helene and Milton. She also discussed some of the results from the Evacuation Survey that was sent out a few months back by Dr. Collins and Elizabeth Dunn’s team, as well as some results from Dr. Collins’ NOAA VORTEX grant (with collaborators from the University of Alabama and Auburn University) which focuses on tornadoes. Cassie has been engaged with that grant providing her meteorological skills to the project, and she has been involved in the focus groups with the public. Using the results from these studies, Cassie was able to inform the public on how to be better prepared for hurricanes. Members of several local organizations were in attendance including the West Central Florida Chapter of the American Meteorological Society, with which Cassie is a member.
Cassie commented, “It was amazing getting to answer questions from the public and I even expanded my professional network and made a connection with someone from the USF counseling center which may be useful for one aspect of my research on mental health!”