Professor Michael John Savage is internationally recognised in Agrometeorology. He is currently a Professor Emeritus of Agrometeorology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in South Africa. He has been on the staff since 1975 (junior lecturer), full-time academic since 1977 and promoted to full Professor in 1988 and Senior Professor in 1994. He was Affiliated Professor, University of the Free State (2016–2018). He was awarded a UKZN fellowship (highest research award) in 1996 and their Distinguished Teacher (highest teaching award) (2014). He has been Acting Head and Head of Department and Head of two Schools, Acting Dean, Assistant Dean, and Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC) of Research and Knowledge Systems. His research has spanned 44 years: methods for the measurement of evaporation, sensible heat flux and carbon dioxide fluxes. Research interests have included agrometeorology, hydrometeorology, energy and water relations including the impact of global climate change, measurement and modelling of surface energy, water transport in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum (SPAC), thermocouple psychrometry, in-service training programmes, SPAC energy and water relations, environmental physics, micrometeorology and environmental instrumentation. Prof Savage is a recipient of the Four Outstanding Young South Africans national award (1990), and the international (senior) Fulbright Scholarship (1992). He was awarded the DScAgric (senior doctorate) by UKZN for research on sensible heat flux for estimating evaporation (2010). The award was the first award in the history of UKZN. In 2014, he was awarded a MScAgric (cum laude) for developing an open web-based teaching, learning and research system for near real-time agrometeorological and environmental applications, data visualisation, and visual literacy serving as a data resource for various disciplines. He specialized in exploring ways of making lecturing content more alive, appealing, and comprehensible to students, particularly those whose first language is not English. For this work, he received a national excellence award for teaching and learning from the Committee of Higher Education (2015). He was awarded a gold medal by the South African Society of Crop Production for scientific achievements in crop production research (1998), their Presidents Trophy (2002), best presentation award (2013), Board Floating Trophy for the best published paper (2014 and 2016) and Honorary Membership (2022). He was awarded the inaugural South African Society for Atmospheric Sciences (SASAS) medal (2015/6) in recognition of his research, educational and technical achievements in the atmospheric sciences. His research team was awarded the SASAS Stanley Jackson 2020 award (best research paper in the Atmospheric Sciences) for a publication, by his PhD student and co-authors, in the journal Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. Prof Savage has supervised/mentored/lectured/cooperated with most of the current crop of scientists in Agrometeorology, micrometeorology and SPAC energy and water relations through his postgraduate supervision, scientific workshops and through cooperative research. He has supervised 19 PhD students, 35 masters (eight cum laude), four post-doctoral students and mentored two members of staff. He is currently supervising six PhD students and two masters. His postgraduates have received twelve awards, some with purse. He has examined many PhD theses, including those from other countries. Prof Savage has been a role model for many 100’s of undergraduate students each year. He has lectured courses in introductory to advanced Agrometeorology (second year to masters), Atmospheric Sciences (third year), BioResources (first year), Crop Irrigation (third year), History and Philosophy of Science (masters), Instrumentation for the Life Sciences, Introduction to the Environment (climate change, environmental biophysics, water), Micrometeorology of the Biological Environment, Physical Meteorology, and Soil Physics (third year, 1980). He was the only lecturer in Agrometeorology at the University of Natal/KwaZulu-Natal (1977-2014) and has been responsible for lecturing service courses and the offering of a major in Agrometeorology.
