Dr. Ligia Bernardet, Chief of the Earth Prediction Advancement Division at NOAA Global Systems Laboratory (GSL), has been awarded the Silver Sherman Award for her outstanding leadership and support for community modeling at NOAA. The award was presented at the recent 104th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD, which was focused on “Living in a Changing Environment”.
As a passionate advocate for EPIC and the Unified Forecast System (UFS), Dr. Bernardet has worked to bring together the research and operational communities focused on numerical weather prediction (NWP) in order to drive innovation into operations. She co-leads the Common Community Physics Package, an example for community partnership in the field, is a member of the UFS Steering Committee, co-chairs the UFS System Architecture and Infrastructure Cross Cutting Team, and co-chaired the UFS Release Cross Cutting Team until mid-2023.
Dr. Bernardet joined NOAA GSL (then the Forecast Systems Laboratory) over two decades ago as a postdoctoral scientist working on forecast verification. In 1999, she took a position in the national weather service of her native country, Brazil, and helped stand up the first operational NWP system focused on South America. Four years later, Dr. Bernardet returned to the U.S. to test and evaluate the Weather Research and Forecasting model in preparation for its first operational implementation at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction. This effort evolved into what later became the Developmental Testbed Center.
Improving weather forecasts and Earth system predictions involves not only technical innovation, but the ability to build bridges between different stakeholders and foster community involvement. Dr. Bernardet personifies leadership in all of these areas.
