HWS News
30 June 2025 • Alums Otero '18 Earns Top Dissertation Honor
Former Geoscience major Jeremiah Otero ’18 honored for best dissertation at the University at Albany for groundbreaking research on hurricane patterns.
Jeremiah Otero ’18 studies hurricanes for a living, but in May, he had a moment in the sun when his Ph.D. dissertation at the University at Albany was named the best dissertation in any field in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Otero’s paper, “Diurnal to Seasonal Hurricane Variability and Predictability,” discussed how the “intensity and overall structure of hurricanes varies throughout the day,” Otero says. “Where we might see variations in rain bands and wind. We know it fluctuates throughout the day,” -- that’s the diurnal piece – “but sometimes it deviates from this trend. So, my work in large part was to try to understand how and why this happens.”
Jeremiah Otero ’18, who holds a Ph.D. in atmospheric science, works for Moody’s, a company that provides real-time hurricane products, mainly wind data, to insurance companies. This data allows the insurance companies to anticipate costs and predict in advance where claims are going to be made, Otero says.
This was not Otero’s first academic honor. At Hobart and William Smith, he graduated summa cum laude with a double major in geoscience and Spanish and Hispanic studies and a minor in mathematics. His mentor is Professor of Geoscience Nick Metz, whom he counts as a close friend today. (Otero was known as Jeremiah Piersante at HWS; he has since changed his last name to conform to his father’s.)
"Jeremiah was a tremendous student during his time at HWS," says Metz. "He took full advantage of the liberal arts experience in combining his geoscience major with a major in Spanish and Hispanic studies. He also completed a summer research project. This preparation served him well as he moved on to graduate school. I am incredibly proud of all that he's accomplished but not surprised given his hard-working and forward-thinking nature."
At HWS, Otero studied abroad in Seville, Spain, in 2015, and later captained the Hobart cross country team. He was also a member of Kappa Alpha. After HWS, he got a master’s in atmospheric science at Colorado State University, studying thunderstorms in Argentina, before getting his Ph.D. in atmospheric science at Albany.
A letter from the university notifying Otero of his award called him “a credit to the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences” and went on to say that Otero had “developed into a mature scholar with a promising future.”
That future, at least for now, is being spent in the private sector. Otero is living in Tallahassee, Fla., with his wife, Peyton Capute ’18, and working for Moody’s, a company that provides real-time hurricane products, mainly wind data, to insurance companies. This data allows the insurance companies to anticipate costs and predict in advance where claims are going to be made, Otero says.
“I continued on to the Ph.D. track thinking I might want to be a professor,” Otero says of his career path. “But those jobs are few and far between. I did an internship with another private company when I was at Albany, and that got my foot in the door.”
Otero’s interest in weather began as a boy in Brighton, N.Y., a Rochester suburb. “I’ve always had a fascination sitting outside and watching thunderstorms. My dad and I used to do it,” he says. “I love nature. I love being outside.” One early memory was running around outside his house, “probably wearing a bicycle helmet,” collecting the “penny-size” hail falling from the sky and storing it in the freezer in the kitchen.
From such joyful beginnings come great things, like the Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award.
