Life
Marshall Shepherd: University of Georgia scientist working to involve more African Americans in science
Marshall Shepherd. PHOTO/University of Georgia
While growing up in Canton, Ga., University of Georgia climate scientist Marshall Shepherd knew he wanted to grew to become an entomologist.
“I was always interested in why things were happening,” Shepherd said.
The valedictorian of his Cherokee High School class, Shepherd went on to get three meteorology degrees from Florida State University, which has one of the top climate science programs in the United States.
He spent a dozen years working for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center conducting research and helping design programs that harness technology to help scientists better record and understand what’s going on in the atmosphere. Shepherd was deputy project scientist for the Global Precipitation Measurement missions, which next year will use an international network of satellites to measure precipitation almost everywhere around the globe.
