Reducing Lightning Injuries Worldwide

Dr. Mary Ann Cooper is an emergency physician whose main area of interest is electrical and lightning injuries.  She received her BS and MD from Michigan State University (1971, 1975) and trained in Emergency Medicine (EM) at the University of Cincinnati.  As an early pioneer in emergency medicine, she helped design training and accreditation standards in the field as well as serving on the governing boards of several national EM organizations and as an Oral Board Examiner for more than a decade.  She has become known as the international expert on lightning injuries and has received numerous awards from both the medical and lightning communities for her work.  In 2003, she became the first physician to be awarded a fellowship from the American Meteorological Society and has been awarded the International Conference on Lightning Protection Scientific Committee’s Award for ‘outstanding contribution to lightning science by research or teaching’ in 2014.  She is the author of 6 books and monographs, 61 peer reviewed publications, 2 letters to the editor, 3 editorials, 101 chapters and many informal papers.  She has served as a trainer for the National Weather Service, given hundreds of media interviews worldwide on lightning and lightning injury prevention, and served as an invited expert for several international lightning protection conferences.  After retiring from the University of Illinois, Dr Cooper was awarded Professor Emerita and continues working internationally to mentor young lightning scientists, prevent lightning injuries, educate and raise awareness of lightning safety.  She has served as a Board Member of the Lightning and Electrical Shock Survivors, International, support group for over 25 years and currently serves as the Founding Director of the African Centres for Lightning and Electromagnetics.  

Ron Holle is a meteorological consultant in Oro Valley, Arizona. Ron has worked extensively in meteorological education issues, particularly those relating to lightning safety and the demographics of lightning victims and damages and is recognized as the world expert on the demographics of lightning injury.  He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in meteorology from Florida State University and took additional coursework at the University of Miami.  He has authored or co-authored 64 formally-reviewed journal papers, 12 books and book chapters, and 310 informal papers. He worked with NOAA research laboratories in Norman, Oklahoma, Boulder, Colorado, Coral Gables, Florida, and Silver Spring, Maryland as well as more recently with Vaisala in Tucson. He has analysed cloud-to-ground and cloud lightning data from ground-based detection networks as they relate to various meteorological phenomena. He participated in meteorological field programs in Florida, the Caribbean, and West Africa. Mr. Holle served on the scientific organizing committees of the International Lightning Detection Conferences and International Lightning Meteorology Conferences from 2002 through 2014. He was elected a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society in 2009 and received the Dr. T. Theodore Fujita Research Achievement Award from the National Weather Association in 2008.