In alphabetical order by last name

Ali Abdolali

Ali Abdolali is a senior scientist working at NCEP/EMC at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He is the wave infrastructure lead at NOAA/NCEP. His team is in charge of design, implementation and maintenance of forecast and hindcast wave modeling systems for global to regional and subseasonal or seasonal scales within UFS.

Dr. Ronnie Abolafia-Rosenzweig

Dr. Ronnie Abolafia-Rosenzweig completed his B.S. in civil engineering from Texas A&M University and his doctoral degree at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is a Project Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research where his primary research interests are land surface model development, studies of the terrestrial water cycle inclusive of anthropogenic impacts, fire and drought prediction using machine learning, and statistical modeling, data assimilation, and snow modeling. Ronnie has made significant contributions to understanding how to merge information from globally applicable tools such as remote sensing satellites and land surface models to better understand human impacts on Earth’s terrestrial water and energy budgets. The primary goal of his work is to provide or enhance tools to better inform management of water and food security in the Anthropocene.

Dr. Ravan Ahmadov

Dr. Ravan Ahmadov received a Ph.D. degree in atmospheric physics from Moscow State University in 2004. Dr. Ahmadov did postdoctoral research at the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry from 2005 to 2009. From 2009 to 2023, he worked for NOAA as a CU Boulder CIRES research scientist. Currently he is leading the atmospheric composition branch of NOAA/ESRL/GSL/EPAD.

His research has been focused on the simulation of air pollution from various natural and anthropogenic sources. Currently, he is working on improving fire weather and atmospheric composition prediction capabilities in atmospheric models and applying these tools to understand and forecast various processes associated with fire weather and smoke.

Dr. Curtis Alexander

Dr. Curtis Alexander (NOAA/OAR/GSL) received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Pennsylvania State University (1999) and the University of Oklahoma (2002, 2010) respectively. His graduate work focused on studying severe convective storms, including tornadoes, using high-resolution mobile Doppler weather radar observations. He joined the Global Systems Division (now Laboratory — GSL) of NOAA/ESRL in 2009, first as a University of Colorado CIRES employee before becoming a NOAA federal employee in 2016. He focused his research in NOAA on the development of high-resolution model systems to support convection-allowing model forecasts including data assimilation of storm-to-mesoscale information and became a division chief of GSL in 2017. He has helped transition multiple versions of the Rapid Refresh (RAP) and High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) from research to operations at NWS/NCEP between 2014 and 2020 and is also a co-lead on the Unified Forecast System (UFS) Short-Range Weather/Convection Allowing Model (SRW/CAM) Application Team that includes development of the Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS).

Dr. Thomas Auligné

Dr. Thomas Auligné is the Director of the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA), a research center based on a multi-agency partnership between NOAA, NASA, the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. Air Force. He is responsible for the mission to accelerate and improve the quantitative use of satellite data in weather, ocean, climate, and environmental analysis and prediction systems. Before joining the JCSDA in 2015, Dr. Auligné held research scientist positions at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF), and Météo-France. Dr. Auligné earned a M.S. in Meteorology and a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Physics in Toulouse, France. His main topics of interest are data assimilation, remote sensing, artificial intelligence, Earth system prediction, and transition from research to operations.

Luiz Bacelar

Luiz Bacelar is a third year Ph.D. student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University. His research focuses on reduced-order modeling for physically based land surface models using machine learning techniques.

Barry Baker

Barry Baker is a physical research scientist at NOAA Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) working on various air composition models, both experimental and operational. He is also the lead of the Chemical Modeling and Emission Group at NOAA ARL.

Jian-Wen Bao

Jian-Wen Bao has been leading a team effort in the Physical Sciences Laboratory of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratories to evaluate and improve the performance of physics parameterizations in NOAA’s operational numerical weather prediction models.

Christian Barreto-Schuler

Christian Barreto-Schuler completed his undergraduate studies in meteorology in Peru at the National Agrarian University. After working for some years at the Peruvian Weather Service, he moved to Canada, where he received a M.Sc. degree in Earth and Space Science from York University. He is now pursuing his Ph.D. studies at University at Albany (SUNY).

Dr. Michael Barlage

Dr. Michael Barlage currently serves as a Physical Scientist at NOAA/NWS/NCEP Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) where he leads EMC’s Land Physics and Data Assimilation Team. He also serves as co-lead for the Unified Forecast System Land Working Group. Previously, he held positions as a Research/Project Scientist at NCAR Research Applications Laboratory and University of Arizona. He received his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan and his bachelor’s from Purdue University.

Dr. Neil Barton

Dr. Neil Barton’s research focuses on coupled modeling in polar regions. His main work at EMC is developing the global UFS coupled system with a focus on ensembles and subseasonal to seasonal forecasts.

Tamara Battle

Tamara Battle is the Policy and Partnerships Lead for NOAA’s Weather Program Office (WPO), coordinating and overseeing various aspects of the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017 (the “Weather Act”) and other weather policy topics for WPO and NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). Her current activities include coordinating the office’s first program review; developing a partnerships strategy; improving stakeholder engagement; increasing WPO’s outreach efforts through student internships; and expanding opportunities for atmospheric science and other STEM majors.

Previously, Tamara was the Weather Act Policy Coordinator (contractor) for WPO, collaborating with researchers and subject matter experts across the agency to develop congressional reports required by the Weather Act, and briefing NOAA leadership on related activities and accomplishments within OAR. Prior to NOAA, Tamara spent five years at the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a Science Analyst, assisting with data analytics and science communication. Currently, Tamara is a doctoral candidate at Morgan State University, completing her studies in Environmental Engineering. She holds a B.S. in Environmental Science (Medgar Evers College, CUNY), a M.A. in Geology (The City College of New York, CUNY), and a M.S. in Atmospheric Sciences (Howard University).

Dr. Lisa Bengtsson

Dr. Lisa Bengtsson is a research scientist at the Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL) of the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories (ESRL) in Boulder, Colorado. She joined NOAA ESRL PSL in 2017, most recently from the research branch of the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) where she worked between 2006 and 2017. She currently leads the model development team in the Model Development and Data Assimilation Division in PSL and currently co-leads the UFS Research to Operations physics development team. Dr. Bengtsson’s research is focused on parameterization of cumulus convection with a particular interest in gray-zone representation and stochastic processes, and the role of cumulus convection to represent variability in the global tropics.

Dr. Ligia Bernardet

Dr. Ligia Bernardet’s work straddles the interface between research and operations in numerical weather prediction. As the deputy chief of the GSL Earth Prediction Advancement Division, she contributes to planning and supporting the execution of model development in the areas of physical parameterizations, interactions between domains of the Earth system (atmosphere, land, ocean, and sea ice), air composition, and atmospheric chemistry. The division’s products are used by the National Weather Service to create numerical guidance for forecasters and by the general community to conduct research. She is passionate about creating mechanisms that facilitate synergistic interactions between the research and operational communities. For that reason, she works on projects of the Developmental Testbed Center that aim at engaging the academic community in using NOAA models and at evaluating innovations supplied by the community. Connecting with the research community is a key ingredient for accelerating the transition of innovations to operations and creating better forecasts.

Keven Blackman

Keven Blackman has been working in computer science and meteorology for over 21 years and has been involved in weather programs across NOAA, Air Force, DOD, and industry. He has led a variety of programs related to Air Force Support applications, numerical weather modeling, cloud architecture, and cloud data migration. Currently, he serves as Chief Engineer of the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) and is honored to be charged with driving community contributions to the United Forecast System (UFS) Weather Model. He graduated from the University of Illinois, Springfield with a master’s in computer science. He is currently completing a doctorate in information technology with a focus on blockchain and machine learning.

Alan Brammer

Alan Brammer is a researcher in the Tropical Cyclone Group at CIRA – CSU, working on ensemble based probabilistic guidance for tropical cyclone forecasts, software development, and maintenance of new and existing tropical cyclone guidance tools. Additionally, he works on facilitating the transition of new research software to operations.

Lori Bruhwiler

Lori Bruhwiler’s research interests include understanding the budgets of CO2 and CH4 using atmospheric transport models and assimilation techniques. In particular, she works on atmospheric transport modeling of measured trace species and Earth System Modeling using high-resolution transport models and state-of-the-art natural and anthropogenic emission models.

Jacob Carley

Jacob Carley is a Physical Scientist in the Modeling and Data Assimilation Branch at the Environmental Modeling Center. He works in the Data Assimilation and Quality Control Group and has a background in convective-scale data assimilation. Jacob has worked on upgrades and implementations for the NAM and RTMA systems. He now leads the Rapid Refresh Forecast System development project at EMC and works closely with colleagues across NOAA, academia, and the wider community.

Dr. DaNa Carlis

DaNa L. Carlis, Ph.D. is an award-winning meteorologist and serves as the Director of NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL). At NSSL, he is responsible for leading the scientific and information technology efforts of the laboratory. As NSSL Director, he leads the premiere severe weather research laboratory with more than 180 scientists, engineers, and administrators. Prior to NSSL, DaNa served as the Deputy Director of NOAA’s Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) in Boulder, CO and prior to GSL at the Weather Program Office (WPO) in Washington, DC, where he was the founding program manager of the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) and Next-Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS) programs. DaNa enjoys the fact that he’s able to work between science, policy, and society to ensure better products and services to the American people.

DaNa attended Howard University in Washington, DC, where he obtained a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry (2000), as well as a M.S. in Atmospheric Sciences (2002) and a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences (2007). In 2007, DaNa was the second African American male to receive his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from Howard University.

DaNa is originally from Tulsa, OK where he developed a love for science and math at an early age. In 2018, he was inducted into the Booker T. Washington High School Distinguished Hall of Fame. As an active member of the community, DaNa serves on the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Council. In his spare time, DaNa enjoys cheering for his favorite sports team, the Oklahoma Sooners, mentoring and coaching students, and spending time with his family. DaNa is married to Dr. Lydia Carlis, Chief People and Program Officer at Acelero Learning and Founder/CEO of Eyemagination Enterprises LLC. They have a daughter, Dia Carlis, who is seeking her master’s degree in Africana Studies at Georgia State University.

Dr. Frederick “Fred” H. Carr

Dr. Fred Carr is currently the McCasland Foundation Presidential Professor Emeritus and Director Emeritus in the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. After receiving his Ph.D. from Florida State University under Dr. T. N. Krishnamurti and having a postdoctoral position at SUNY-Albany with Dr. Lance Bosart, he began his 43-year career at OU in 1979. His research interests include numerical weather prediction, data assimilation, synoptic, mesoscale and tropical meteorology, and use of new observing systems. Dr. Carr has provided service to a wide variety of professional activities, including the National Research Council’s “Network of Networks” report, the Oklahoma Mesonet Steering Committee, the UCAR Board of Trustees, Associate Director of the NSF Center for the Analysis and Prediction of Storms, and as a founder of COMET at UCAR. He was Director of the OU School of Meteorology for 14 years, during the period when the National Weather Center was built. He has served as co-chair of three committees (UCACN, UMAC and CMrC) that provided guidance to NCEP, NWS, and NOAA on improving U.S. Numerical Weather Prediction, and is now co-chair of NOAA’s Community Modeling Board. He was President of the American Meteorological Society in 2016 and served on the AMS Executive Committee from 2015-2019. He is a Fellow of the AMS and currently chairs its Committee on Ethics.

Tim Carroll

Microsoft is deeply committed to supporting the rapidly expanding requirements of the Numerical Weather Prediction and Earth Systems Modeling communities. Tim leads the efforts within Microsoft Azure to collaborate with government and industry to build both the technical architectures and economic models vital to the mission to protect our neighbors and communities.

Dr. Benjamin Cash

Dr. Benjamin Cash is a Research Professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences and is also a researcher with the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA) at George Mason University. He received his B.A. in Earth and Planetary Science from Harvard University in 1994 and his Ph.D. in Meteorology from the Pennsylvania State University in 2000. Dr. Cash joined COLA in 2002 and George Mason University in 2014. His research has focused on three main areas: 1) the impact of climate variability and change on human health, particularly through the spread of infectious disease, 2) understanding and separating the predictable and unpredictable components of the climate system, with an emphasis on drought, and 3) the application of high-performance computing resources to improving climate models. His current research focuses on the dynamics and predictability of the ongoing extreme droughts across the globe.

Albert Cerrone

Al Cerrone’s research is directed towards advancing Digital Twin. He uses numerical simulation, machine learning, and data informatics to render probabilistic guidance for both organic and inorganic materials and systems. His primary research focus is applying elements of Digital Twin to model hurricane-induced storm surge. He also leverages Digital Twin to investigate materials durability in organic systems like biofilms and inorganic systems like additively manufactured metals. He is a research assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame and a senior research fellow at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering & Sciences.

Dr. Arun Chawla

Arun Chawla leads the Engineering & Implementation Branch at EMC, which is responsible for supporting the software infrastructure development of NWS’s weather models and provides the engineering support for transitioning models into operations. Arun has a background in wave modeling and over 15 years of experience in transitioning systems into operations.

Dr. Xiaomin Chen

Dr. Xiaomin Chen’s research is aimed at understanding the boundary layer processes that contribute to the intensity and structural changes of tropical cyclones. His current research utilizes a combination of manned and unmanned aircraft observations and turbulence-resolving large-eddy simulations to improve the modeling of boundary-layer processes in hurricane conditions. A recently developed boundary layer scheme has been implemented into NOAA’s next-generation hurricane forecast model, the Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System.

Dr. Sen Chiao

Sen Chiao is the Director of the NOAA Cooperative Science Center in Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology (NCAS-M) and a Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Howard University. NCAS-M is a research-through-education enterprise led by Howard University and includes eight other institutions. As the Center Director, Dr. Chiao provides the executive leadership for NCAS-M through strategic communications, design of the overall scientific focus and plans, and provides oversight, management, and planning for the implementation of all aspects of the NCAS-M programmatic activities.

His research work and interests include data analysis and modeling with an emphasis on spatial and temporal variability of precipitation forecasts and heatwaves. The overarching goals are to advance our understanding of fundamental science in the areas of weather and climate change and their linkages to our environment as well as societal impacts.

Dr. Adam Clark

Dr. Clark is a Research Meteorologist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory and Affiliate Associate Professor in the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. He is one of the lead planners and facilitators for the annual NOAA/Hazardous Weather Testbed Spring Forecasting Experiments, and his primary research interests are geared toward developing tools and improving forecast models used for predicting severe weather.

Austin Coleman

Austin Coleman is a developer of ensemble post-processing tools, a high-impact weather predictability / R2O2R enthusiast, an alumnus of Valpo and Texas Tech, a dog person, and an optimist.

Dr. Christopher Cox

Dr. Cox is a research scientist and lead of the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL) Boundary Layer Observations and Processes Division’s Cryospheric Team. His work focuses on observing the processes that transfer energy between the atmosphere and cryospheric surfaces in the high northern latitudes, including sea ice, terrestrial snow cover, and the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Dr. Brian Curtis

Brian received his B.S. in Meteorology from SUNY Oswego and M.S. / Ph.D. in Computational Sciences and Informatics from George Mason University. He spent time at the US Naval Research Laboratory working as a computational scientist in the geospace sciences and switched to NOAA/EMC with IMSG as a scientific programmer/analyst.

Laura Dailey

Laura Dailey is a rising senior at the University of Delaware studying meteorology and climate science with minors in journalism and geography and is in the process of getting GIS-certified. She is a William M. Lapenta intern this summer in NOAA’s Weather Program Office (WPO) under the mentorship of Jose-Henrique Alves, Jessie Carman, Jordan Dale, Maoyi Huang, Chandra Kondragunta, and John Ten Hoeve. Her project focuses on formulating guidelines for WPO to better measure and foster innovation in weather forecasting. She will provide a set of recommendations for how reviewers can better score grant proposals based on innovation to help bring in new and fresh ideas to operational forecasting. Her professional interests include forecasting, weather communications, and innovative research. She is looking forward to presenting her findings at this workshop and learning from all of the sessions!

Paul Dirmeyer

Professor Paul Dirmeyer conducts research on the role of the land surface in the climate system. This includes the development and application of land-surface models, studies of the impact of land surface variability on the predictability of climate, interactions between the terrestrial and atmospheric branches of the hydrologic cycle, and the impacts of land use change on regional and global climate.

Christopher Domanti

Chris graduated from Cornell University with a Master of Engineering in Systems Engineering and has spent 12 years in the Raytheon organization supporting a variety of programs in the weather and climate domains including the Joint Polar Satellite System Common Ground System (JPSS CGS), the Earth Observing Systems Data and Information System Evolution (EOSDIS) and Development (EED), and the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS). Starting as a Systems Engineer and gaining experience in each step of the systems development lifecycle, Chris made the transition to Program Management where he is now the Program Manager of the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) contract.

Dr. Michael Ek

Michael Ek joined NCAR’s Research Applications Laboratory in 2018 as Director of the Joint Numerical Testbed. Before NCAR, he was Deputy Director and led the land-hydrology team at the Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) of NOAA/NWS/NCEP, where both JNT and EMC support transitioning research innovations into NCAR and NOAA models, respectively. Previously he was at Oregon State University doing research on land-atmosphere interaction, and land and boundary-layer model development. He is involved with a number of national and international activities in Earth system model research and development (e.g., via WMO WCRP and GEWEX projects). Many of these efforts are focused on land-atmosphere coupling and interaction in order to increase understanding, and make corresponding improvements in weather and climate models. He received his Ph.D. from Wageningen University (The Netherlands) in 2005.

Dr. Oliver Elbert

Oliver Elbert is a computational physicist at GFDL. His work focuses on improving weather forecasts and climate predictions through improvements in numerical algorithms and computational capabilities. As a member of GFDL’s FV3 team he is a developer of the FV3 dynamical core and the SHiELD model. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Irvine, using numerical simulations to study galaxy evolution and cosmology.

Dr. Mike Farrar

Dr. Mike Farrar is the Director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), where he oversees nine National Weather Service (NWS) national centers with 750+ staff and $210+ million annual budget for environmental prediction operations. All together, these nine NCEP centers (Aviation Weather Center, Climate Prediction Center, Environmental Modeling Center, National Hurricane Center, Ocean Prediction Center, Space Weather Prediction Center, Storm Prediction Center, Weather Prediction Center, and NCEP Central Operations) provide the core of NWS’ mission to protect life and property for the nation.

In addition to his primary job, Mike was the 2021 President of the American Meteorological Society, the primary U.S. professional society for meteorology, and currently serves on the AMS Council and Executive Committee. He also serves as the Region 4 (North America) representative on the governing council of the International Forum of Meteorological Societies (IFMS), the consortium of the world’s meteorological professional societies that promote the science and help developing countries create and advance professional meteorology societies of their own.

Mike’s prior positions include: Chief Scientist for Weather for the U.S. Air Force, Senior VP and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the University Corporation of Atmospheric Research (UCAR), Director of NWS’ Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) and the Meteorological Development Laboratory (MDL), VP of Strategic Development for Science and Technology Corporation (STC), and 24 years with the US Air Force as a uniformed meteorologist where he achieved the rank of Colonel and served in several leadership positions.

Dr. Farrar holds Doctorate and Master of Science degrees in meteorology from Florida State University, where his research focused on satellite-based microwave radiometry. He is a distinguished graduate from the Eisenhower School of the National Defense University, with a Master of Science degree in National Resource Strategy. He also holds a Bachelor of Science in Meteorology from the Pennsylvania State University and a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Purdue University.

Dr. Tracy Fanara

Dr. Tracy Fanara is an environmental engineer, research scientist, and communicator with a B.S., ME, and Ph.D. from the University of Florida’s College of Environmental Engineering. Tracy spent about a decade as a project engineer designing stormwater and flood management systems around the world. In research, Tracy has developed water treatment technology and designs and models for hydrologic and coastal restoration. At Mote Marine Laboratory, Tracy developed and redeveloped citizen science programs and technology for qualitative and quantitative reporting of environmental data and Florida red tide effects, engaging over 2 million users. Tracy gained international media recognition due to her expertise in hydrology and harmful algae blooms during the Florida Water crises of 2018/19 and continues to contribute to The Weather Channel, FOX Weather, Discovery, and National Geographic. Tracy is now the Coastal Modeling Portfolio Manager for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA/NOS/IOOS) where she manages coastal ocean modeling efforts to gain a better understanding of our earth systems and threats to human lives and livelihoods on our coasts. Outside of work, Tracy co-produces a STEM comic book called “Seekers of Science” and runs the STEM Camp for middle school girls, Mission: Tampa Bay. You may have seen Tracy on Science Channel, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Weather Channel, Fox or CBS; in Marvel’s Unstoppable Wasp; or as Xylem YSI’s Mission Water, Water Hero.

Dr. Sergey Frolov

Dr. Frolov is a reanalysis and data assimilation team lead at the Physical Science Laboratory of NOAA, located in Boulder, Colorado. He is a data assimilation and coupled model forecasting expert with a track record of formulating and implementing advanced computing algorithms that drive Earth Science modeling and observation workflows. Past contributions include scientific support for negotiation of the US-Canada water sharing treaty; design of the US strategy for harmful algal bloom observations; implementation of the coupled data assimilation and coupled ensemble forecast component of the Navy’s S2S forecast model. Dr. Frolov’s present focus is on the development of the coupled ensemble forecast for NOAA’s Unified Forecast System.

Bing Fu

Bing Fu is a physical scientist at EMC working on UFS-based medium-range weather applications. His work is focused on GEFS/SFS.

Kun Gao

Kun Gao is an associate research scholar at Princeton University and a member of the GFDL SHiELD model development team. He specializes in developing new methods to improve the prediction of intensity, track, and the heavy rainfall of hurricanes in high-resolution models and also conducts basic research to improve the understanding of the structure and development of hurricanes and their relationship with the large-scale environment on weather to subseasonal timescales.

Kevin Garrett

Kevin Garrett is the Modeling Program Director at the NWS Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI). Mr. Garrett oversees management of the NWS Modeling Programs, including the Next-Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS), the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP), the National Air Quality Forecast Capability (NAQFC), Weeks 3-4, and COASTAL Act. The Modeling Programs create and support opportunities to advance NWS operational numerical weather prediction (NWP) capabilities, with a current emphasis on transitioning the NCEP production suite to the Unified Forecast System (UFS) and improving model guidance across space and time scales to meet the needs of NWS forecasters and other users and stakeholders. Mr. Garrett serves on several committees, teams, and working groups including the Development Testbed Center (DTC) Management Board and the UFS Steering Committee. Prior to joining the NWS, Mr. Garrett spent several years in the NOAA/NESDIS Center for Satellite Applications and Research, leading the Data Assimilation Science Team to advance the use and impact of satellite observations in global NWP systems.

Dr. Stefan Gary

Dr. Stefan Gary’s interest in Earth science was awakened during his Peace Corps service, resulting in training in physical oceanography. As an oceanographer, Stefan used theoretical, modeling, and observational approaches (including substantial time at sea and piloting autonomous robots) to study the large-scale circulation of the North Atlantic. Now, Stefan works as part of the Parallel Works team to empower scientists and engineers to run high performance computing workflows in the cloud. In particular, Stefan collaborates with Parallel Works users to develop workflows in Parsl and other frameworks for earth and environmental science applications, including machine learning. He has also taught undergraduates and graduate students in the US and Scotland.

Dr. Nicholas Gasperoni

Dr. Nicholas Antonio Gasperoni is a Research Scientist for the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma (OU), working within the Multiscale data Assimilation and Predictability (MAP) Laboratory established by Dr. Xuguang Wang. His research interests include data assimilation methods and ensemble forecasting techniques to improve convective-scale numerical weather prediction. This includes application of methods such as valid time shifting which focus on practical, cost-effective means of improving these systems within a research-to-operations collaborative framework with NOAA scientists. He graduated from OU with master’s and doctoral degrees in meteorology in 2011 and 2018, respectively. He grew up in southeast Michigan and graduated from the University of Michigan in 2008 with a B.S.E. in meteorology (Go Blue!).

Guoqing Ge

Guoqing Ge’s work focuses on developing and testing modifications in data assimilation for numerical models. He has been working on the HRRR, RAP, RRFS, 3DRTMA, and GFS/GDAS systems, dealing with all types of in-situ or remote-sensed meteorological observations, testing and refining algorithms for these operational real-time applications.

Dr. Maria Gehne

Dr. Maria Gehne is an associate scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Environmental Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Before joining CIRES, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Her research focuses on large scale tropical convection and its predictability and representation in numerical weather forecasts. She received her doctorate in 2012 from New York University in atmosphere ocean science and mathematics.

Benjamin Green

Ben Green is a research scientist at CIRES/CU and NOAA/GSL who works on subseasonal-to-seasonal applications of UFS.

Jared Goldman

Jared Goldman is an artificial intelligence research scientist at Charles River Analytics. His focuses include reinforcement learning, probabilistic modeling, and applications of AI to natural hazards modeling and decision-making. Jared graduated from University of North Carolina with a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Mathematics.

Dr. Iman Gohari

Iman Gohari, PhD. is a senior Cloud HPC application engineer at Intel Corporation. At this role, he contributes to help increase the reach of Intel HPC solutions on the Cloud to solve the civilizations biggest technical challenges, including Earth’s science modelling.

Iman Gohari, Ph.D. is a former Director of Science at Tomorrow.io (formerly ClimaCell Inc.). Dr. Gohari led a team of scientists and engineers who designed, developed, tested and operationalized an automated, on-demand, scalable, cloud computing service for NWP modeling known as CBAM (https://www.tomorrow.io/cbam/). He also conducted independent research and development of weather forecasting applications and real-time weather analysis. Prior to Tomorrow.io, Dr. Gohari was a part of the developer team who successfully accelerated the Weather Research and Forecasting model using GPUs at TempoQuest Inc. (https://wrfg.net/). Dr. Gohari currently serves as a member of the program committee of American Meteorological Society Symposium of High Performance Computing for Water, Weather and Climate to coordinate programs, to review scientific abstracts, and to co-chair the conference sessions.

Dr. Gohari holds a Ph.D. in engineering science from University of California San Diego. His main expertise include: high performance computing (HPC), numerical weather prediction (NWP), Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), and Data Science (DS).

Dr. Jose M. Gonzalez-Ondina

Jose Ondina got his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2015. He is currently an ocean modeler at the Center for Coastal Solutions at the University of Florida. He has been developing or modifying different kinds of environmental fluid models since 1998 and continues to do so. Recently he and his colleagues at UF have started writing a GPU Ocean Model based on the algorithms of ROMS.

Dr. Hong Guan

Dr. Hong Guan is currently a scientist of Lynker at NOAA/NWS/NCEP/EMC. For the past eleven years, Dr. Guan has co-led the GEFS reforecast project. Dr. Guan has supported GEFSv13 development and improved the model forecast skill through diagnosing and analyzing model error characteristics and reforecast-based post-processing.

Dr. Lucas Harris

Lucas Harris is the Deputy Division Leader of the Weather and Climate Dynamics Division at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. His research is focused on development and application of the GFDL Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere Dynamical Core (FV3) to create new models for frontier weather and climate problems, especially global-to-regional convective-scale modeling and global storm resolving modeling. He holds a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences and an M.S. in Applied Mathematics, both from the University of Washington, and previously worked at Princeton University and NCAR.

Edward Hartnett

Edward Hartnett is an author of NetCDF, a freely available software library for scientific data, used by NASA, NOAA, the ESA, and climate and meteorology scientists around the world. He contributed to the netCDF-4 upgrade, as well as many other features, tests, and documentation.

While working at LASP, he wrote software for the ground data processing systems of several NASA missions, including data processing for the Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM) and Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SIM); these instruments were used in several missions, including SORCE, TCTE, and TSIS-1 and 2. He also works on improving parallel IO performance for the scientific modeling community as a co-author of the Parallel IO library (PIO), a C/Fortran library that runs on supercomputers, as part of weather and climate models.

Recently, he has begun working on NOAA’s NCEPLIBS, a collection of libraries that are used in the Unified Forecast Model (UFS), as well as many other weather and climate models and applications. He has also supervised or led several excellent software engineering teams, including the Production Software Team, as part of Ground Data Systems for several NASA missions, including Messenger, Cassini, MAVEN, MMS, SORCE, AIM, and TSIS, and the NCEPLIBS team at NOAA.

Andrew Hazelton

Andrew Hazelton is an Assistant Scientist with the University of Miami CIMAS/NOAA AOML, working on hurricane model development and analysis, specifically the Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS). He has led research studies on Hurricanes Michael and Dorian and also helped develop PBL physics upgrades for HAFS, in addition to using observations to evaluate and improve the model.

Cenlin He

Cenlin He is a Project Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). His research foci include land surface modeling, land-atmosphere interaction, and extreme weather. Currently, he is leading two NOAA projects working on drought predictions (including improving UFS drought and precipitation S2S prediction) and interactions among drought, snow, and fire.

Dom Heinzeller

Dom Heinzeller is a computational scientist and the JEDI infrastructure lead at the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation. His career spans from theoretical astrophysics to numerical weather prediction, work that he pursued in Japan, New Zealand, Germany, and the United States.

Dr. Christina Holt

Dr. Christina Holt has a background in data assimilation for numerical weather prediction systems, and focuses her efforts on improving the software and software practices associated with those systems. Most recently, she has been leading the NOAA EPIC Unified Workflow Team and working with representatives from the UFS community to find a solution for improving the UFS workflows used both in research activities and in NOAA operations.

Dr. Songyou Hong

Dr. Songyou Hong received a doctorate from Seoul National University in the summer of 1992 with a thesis focused on simulating heavy rainfall using the MM4. He then worked on improving physical parameterizations used in the NCEP GFS and RSM and led the development of physics algorithms, such as the MRF PBL (Hong and Pan, 1996, MWR). Dr. Hong led the development of the YSU PBL (Hong et al. 2006, MWR) and WSM (Hong et al. 2004, MWR) and WDM (Lim and Hong 2010, MWR) microphysics schemes in the WRF model after moving to Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in the summer of 2000. In addition, he created the Global/Regional Integrated Modeling system (GRIMs; Hong et al. 2013, Asia-Pac. J. Atmos. Sci.), for use in numerical weather prediction, seasonal simulations, and climate research from global to regional scales. In the spring of 2014, Dr. Hong began a new position as the director of the Korea Institute of Atmospheric Prediction Systems (KIAPS). He led the development of the Korean Integrated Model (KIM, Hong et al. 2018, Asia-Pac. J. Atmos. Sci.), a global weather forecast model that has been operational at the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) since April 2020. Dr. Hong returned to NOAA in the spring of 2021. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, and the number of citations exceeds 25,000.

Bo Huang

Bo Huang is a meteorologist with extensive scientific and applied experience in data assimilation and numerical weather prediction. Bo’s current research focuses on chemical data assimilation and forecasting and its transition to operations.

Dr. Jianping Huang

Jianping Huang holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where his research specialized in numerical modeling. He furthered his expertise through a postdoctoral training program at Yale University. With a strong background in computational science, Jianping has amassed extensive experience working with various numerical models, including large-eddy simulations, WRF/Chem, CMAQ, and UFS-AQM online systems.

Currently, Jianping plays a vital role in supporting the development, evaluation, and enhancement of the next-generation regional online air quality model within the UFS (Unified Forecast System) framework. His work involves utilizing the UFS-AQM online system to improve the representation of wildfire emissions and their impact on air quality, especially during periods of intense wildfire events.

Dr. Maoyi Huang

Dr. Maoyi Huang joined the NOAA Weather Program Office (WPO) in August 2021 as the Earth Prediction Innovation Center Program Manager. Prior to WPO, She was the COASTAL Act Program Manager, and the lead of land, water, coastal and cross-cutting infrastructure program areas with the National Weather Service Office of Science and Technology Integration’s Modeling Programs Division. Her scientific expertise lies in understanding the complex multiscale interactions of hydrologic, ecological, and atmospheric processes using an Earth system modeling approach through model development, applications, analysis and model-data integration.

Wei Huang

Wei Huang is a Sr. Associate Scientist working at NOAA/PSL, mainly working on scientific software issues for ensemble data assimilation by applying JEDI to UFS data assimilation with various real data. Before joining NOAA/PSL, Wei had worked for HPE as application engineer, and prior worked at NCAR as associate scientist or software engineer.

David Huber

David joined the EPIC Program in May bringing a diverse background in modeling, data assimilation, workflow development, cloud computing, and operational experience to the team. Before joining EPIC, he supported NOAA-NESDIS-STAR through the support of the SRW App and global workflows for use in data assimilation experiments for 3 years and before that led the data and development team for the SAGE III/ISS instrument at NASA Langley for 8 years.

Johnna Infanti

Johnna Infanti is a Meteorologist in the Operational Prediction Branch of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. Her areas of expertise include subseasonal to seasonal prediction, climate modeling, and skill assessment of climate models. Johnna is also one of the forecasters for CPC’s Week 3-4 timescale, and Monthly and Seasonal Outlooks.

Dr. Christiane Jablonowski

Christiane Jablonowski is a Professor in the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan. She has worked at ECMWF and NCAR and was a visiting scientist at NOAA GFDL in 2006. Dr. Jablonowski’s research lies at the interface between weather and climate modeling, scientific computing, and data science. Her current work focuses on the dynamical cores (the fluid dynamics component) and coupling techniques for weather and climate models including the UFS. She is a member of the UFS-R2O project team, a co-lead of the UFS-CAM application team, a member of the Steering Committee for NCAR’s CESM model, and a co-chair of the CESM Atmosphere Model Working Group.

Dr. Neil Jacobs

Neil Jacobs is currently the chief science advisor for the Unified Forecast System (UFS) within UCAR’s Cooperative Programs for the Advancement of Earth System Science (CPAESS). Neil was the previous Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction and Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere from 2018 to early 2021. Prior to NOAA, he was the Chief Scientist at Panasonic Avionics Corporation, where he directed the research and development of both the aviation weather observing platform and weather forecast model programs. Neil holds bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and physics from the University of South Carolina and a master’s and doctorate in atmospheric science from North Carolina State University.

Tara Jensen

Tara Jensen is a Project Manager II in NCAR’s Research Applications Laboratory (RAL). She serves the broader community as the Chair of the AMS STAC Committee on Probability and Statistics. She did her graduate work at Colorado State University between 1991-1997. Tara has vast experience across atmospheric sciences, including managing small field campaigns, running quasi-real-time Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) systems, and developing and evaluating NWP models through diagnostics and statistical analysis. For the past 8 years, she has been leading the DTC verification team in the development of the enhanced Model Evaluation Tools verification and diagnostics framework (METplus). This framework has its roots in Tropospheric weather and Tropical Cyclone verification, but over the years, it has been extended to specifically include metrics for applications to all components of an Earth system modeling framework. Throughout her career, and especially through her work in verification, Tara has developed strong connections to many disciplines within the public, private, and academic sectors.

Dr. Le Jiang

Dr. Le Jiang has a Ph.D. in Earth System Science and brings over 30 years of experience in operational weather forecast, research, applications development, and management. He has worked as a weatherman, physical scientist, software developer/project lead, manager/director, VP/Chief Scientist. Dr. Jiang is the inventor of IMSG’s Enterprise Integration Aviation Weather System (eIAWS®) solution and now serves as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of IMSG.

Dr. Israel Jirak

Dr. Israel Jirak is the Science and Operations Officer (SOO) at the NOAA/NWS/Storm Prediction Center (SPC). He joined the SPC in 2010 as a Techniques Development Meteorologist and was promoted to the SOO position in 2012. He earned a bachelor’s degree in atmospheric science from the University of Kansas and master’s and doctorate degrees in atmospheric science from Colorado State University. In his current position at SPC, Dr. Jirak advises on research projects for a Federal staff of approximately 25 forecasters and development meteorologists, as well as approximately 10 researchers, at the University of Oklahoma Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations (CIWRO). He also serves as the focal point of research-to-operations at the SPC by collaborating with NOAA laboratories and academic institutions through the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT). In the HWT, Dr. Jirak co-organizes and co-leads the annual Spring Forecasting Experiment (SFE), which brings together forecasters, researchers, and developers from across the world to address severe weather forecasting challenges. Over the last decade, the HWT SFE has focused on developing and evaluating optimal configurations of convection-allowing models and ensembles for severe weather forecasting and testing innovative scale- and phenomenon-appropriate subjective and objective verification approaches.

Aaron Jones

Aaron is the Product Owner of the EPIC Community Engagement Team, a retired Air Force veteran with over 20 years of experience in weather operations, forecasting, and analysis. During his career, he gained valuable experience through multiple deployments managing high-tempo weather operations, as well as in many diverse areas such as cybersecurity infrastructure development, network administration, and system implementation. Apart from his military experience, Aaron received his associate’s degree in meteorology, a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology and a Master of Science in Cybersecurity.

Hyun-Sook Kim

Hyun-Sook Kim is a physical oceanographer who has been involved in the research, development and transitioning of ocean model components with UFS-HAFS. Hyun-Sook’s interests include a 3-way coupling Hurricane-Ocean-Wave model system and also data assimilation.

Dr. Jong Kim

Jong Kim works as the product owner of the NOAA EPIC code management team to support the UFS Weather Model and application releases. Before joining EPIC, he led the Marine Data Assimilation Team at NOAA Environmental Modeling Center (EMC). Through the UFS-R2O marine reanalysis project, the Next-Generation Global Ocean Data Assimilation System (NG-GODAS) was successfully demonstrated in the JEDI-based Sea-Ice Ocean and Coupled Assimilation (SOCA) framework. Jong also spent about 12 years as a lead software engineer for the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) at NASA. His early career included a computational scientist position at the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of the DOE Argonne National Lab. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Utah.

Dr. James (Jim) Kinter

Dr. Jim Kinter is Professor of Climate Dynamics in the department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences of the College of Science at George Mason University. He is also Director of the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA), studying climate variability and predictability on subseasonal and longer time scales, and Director of the Virginia Climate Center, working to enhance Virginia’s resilience to the impacts of climate variability and climate change. He is serving as co-PI on the Unified Forecast System Research-to-Operations Project. After earning his doctorate in geophysical fluid dynamics at Princeton University in 1984, Dr. Kinter served as a National Research Council Associate at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and as a faculty member of the University of Maryland prior to helping to create COLA. Dr. Kinter has contributed to over 110 peer-reviewed publications that have been cited over 10,000 times and has served on many national review panels for both scientific research programs and programs for computational climate modeling.

Dr. Daryl Kleist

Daryl Kleist is head of the Data Assimilation and Quality Control Group at the Environmental Modeling Center (NOAA/NWS/NCEP). His interests include operational data assimilation, numerical weather prediction, atmospheric predictability, targeted observing, and forecast sensitivity. He first joined the staff at EMC as a contractor in 2003, eventually becoming a federal employee in 2011. In 2014, he joined the faculty at the University of Maryland-College Park, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, where he remained until 2017 when he rejoined the federal staff at EMC. In addition to his position at EMC, he currently serves as Editor for Monthly Weather Review and as a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the World Weather Research Programme at the World Meteorological Organization. He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ph.D. at the University of Maryland-College Park.

Dr. Milan Klöwer

Milan Klöwer is a postdoctoral climate scientist at MIT. Since starting his Ph.D. in Oxford, he worked on various aspects of the interface between climate and computer science: Low-precision computing and stochastic rounding and how they can enhance the predictability of weather and climate. Information theory and lossy compression to reduce climate data into its real information content. Software engineering to build composable climate models that bridge the gap between easy to use and extend and running efficiently on large supercomputers.

Dr. Walter Kolczynski

Dr. Walter Kolczynski completed his Ph.D. at Penn State specializing in ensemble uncertainty and post-processing. This was followed by a postdoctoral program at the Naval Postgraduate School using self-organizing maps to analyze model error. At the completion of his postdoctoral program, he took a position as a contractor at EMC working on ensemble development. He now serves as a core developer and code manager of the global workflow at EMC.

Dr. Krishna Kumar

Dr. V. Krishna Kumar provides technical support and oversight as the EPIC Program Coordinator and Senior Program Scientist to EPIC Program, EPIC Contracts, WPO Management and OAR and EPIC Cloud Projects. Krishna is the Project Manager for multiple EPIC Program funded projects such as JCSDA, OAR Cloud High Performance Computing Incubator, EPIC innovation projects and UFS-R2O Data Assimilation/Reanalysis & Reforecast and Project Engineering.

Krishna has 30 years of combined operational and research experience in Numerical Weather Prediction, Data Assimilation, Observing System Experiments, Observing System Simulation Experiments, GFS forecast skill dropout prediction and diagnosis, forecast skill Summary Assessment Metrics, tropical (monsoon) meteorology and climate studies, software development, software engineering, Operations to Research, Research to Operations and High Performance Computing at NCEP Central Operations, EMC, NOAA/JCSDA, NESDIS/STAR, NASA/GSFC and India’s premier research institutes National Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) and Physical Research Laboratory (PRL). Krishna obtained his Ph.D. in Meteorology from the Physical Research Laboratory, Department of Space in India.

Kenta Kurosawa

Kenta Kurosawa is currently a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, under the guidance of Professor Jon Poterjoy.

Dr. Terra Ladwig

Terra has a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma. Her research background is in hourly to sub-hourly EnKF assimilation of radar observations. She has been at GSL since 2014, contributing to rapidly updating assimilation for improved hazardous weather prediction. Terra has led the Data Assimilation Branch and is currently the acting Deputy for the Assimilation, Scientific Computing, and Evaluation Novel Division, ASCEND and the GSL FAA Program Manager.

Weiwei Li

Weiwei Li has always had a strong passion for helping enhance predictive capabilities of multiscale processes with longer lead times. Weiwei deeply believes that 1) advancing model physics and associated formulations for realistically representing physical processes and 2) improving our knowledge of sources of predictability are two essential ingredients (in addition to optimizing model initialization) for fundamentally increasing forecasting accuracy, reliability, and lead times on physical grounds. Her research has followed these two directions and covered atmospheric processes across multiple spatiotemporal scales, involving moist convection, atmospheric boundary layers, synoptic-scale phenomena such as tropical cyclones, African easterly waves and Rossby wave breaking, and up to the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) and large-scale circulation. Weiwei’s background also includes large-scale diagnostics, combined with comprehensive knowledge of model physics through actively working for the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP) and its associated single-column model (SCM) related projects. Weiwei currently leads two Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) projects: Testing and Evaluation of Unified Forecast System (UFS) Physics and Testing and Evaluation of the MPAS physics. Weiwei also participates in multiple other model physics-related projects under DoE and NCAR.

Dr. Guo-Yuan Lien

Dr. Guo-Yuan Lien is an associate researcher at the Research and Development Center, Central Weather Bureau (CWB) of Taiwan. He is currently leading the data assimilation work for CWB’s numerical weather prediction systems.

Bin Liu

Bin Liu is a NCEP operational hurricane forecast system developer.

Dr. Hanli Liu

Dr. Hanli Liu is a Senior Scientist at High Altitude Observatory, National Center for Atmospheric Research. He received his Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Space Sciences from the University of Michigan. His research interests include atmospheric dynamics, atmospheric waves and their roles in lower and upper atmosphere coupling, and whole atmosphere modeling.

Sarah Lu

Sarah Lu is affiliated with University at Albany, State University of New York and Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation. Her research focuses on quantifying the distributions of tropospheric aerosols, its impact on weather forecasts and climate predictions, and improving aerosol forecasts through the assimilation of satellite and in-situ aerosol observations. She has also been engaged in atmosphere-land surface interaction and regional air quality modeling.

Xu Lu

Xu Lu is an early career research scientist working on hurricane data assimilation.

Dr. Quang-Hung Luu

Quang-Hung Luu received a B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics and Mechanics from Vietnam National University Hanoi, a Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Science from Kyoto University, and a Ph.D in Computer Science and Software Engineering from Swinburne University of Technology. At present, he is a Research Fellow, working at both Monash University and Swinburne University of Technology. He has been an Associate Lecturer at Vietnam National University, Hanoi and a Research Fellow at National University of Singapore for multiple years. He has other research experiences at Kyoto University and University of Queensland. His current research interests are software quality and testing, computing systems, and ocean modeling.

Rahul Mahajan

Rahul Mahajan is a Physical Scientist with the NCEP/EMC Engineering and Implementation Division. He is the team lead for the global-workflow project that oversees the integration of the global applications GFS and GEFS. He is also the Transition to Operations team lead serving as the conduit between application teams and NCEP/NCO evaluating operational readiness of applications.

Dr. Jonathan Martinez

Dr. Jonathan Martinez is a Research Scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) and is stationed at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, FL. Jon’s research background primarily specializes in the multiscale dynamics contributing to tropical cyclone formation, intensification, and expansion. His research approach blends a variety of observational techniques and high-resolution numerical simulations to comprehensively investigate the tropical cyclone life cycle. Jon is currently working at CIRA/NHC under the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP) with a focus on developing research-based applications and products to aid tropical cyclone forecasts.

Dr. Avichal Mehra

Dr. Avichal Mehra has about 25 years of experience leading and performing scientific development and research in the areas of operational forecasting, dynamics of coupled atmosphere-land-ocean-wave models, numerical analysis, model diagnostics, and analyzing and interpreting geophysical data and model results. As Chief of the Dynamics and Coupled Modeling Group, Dr. Mehra has taken on the responsibility of providing key science and technical leadership/supervision to help build global and regional UFS-based coupled applications and frameworks for future operational systems at National Weather Service/National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NWS/NCEP). Dr. Mehra has been been involved with the development and transition of  operational Hurricane Models and operational Ocean Forecast systems at NWS/NCEP for more than a decade and serves as a Co-lead of the UFS Global Application Team, Co-chair of ICAMS implementation team for Global Coupled Modeling and represents NWS/NCEP in WMO/IOC’s Expert Team on Operational Ocean Forecast Systems (ETOOFS).

Jessica Meixner

Jessica Meixner is a Physical Scientist in the Coupled Modeling Division at the Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) within NOAA/NWS/NCEP. At EMC, Jessica has worked on various aspects of wave and coupled modeling. Currently, Jessica is serving as co-project lead for the transition to operations project for the next Global Forecast System, GFSv17 and is the point of contact for the wave component in various current operational systems. She received her Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Texas Tech University and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Computational and Applied Mathematics from The University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Shakila Merchant

Dr. Shakila Merchant worked as an Environmental Scientist at the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India for more than 10 years before moving to the United States and joined NOAA Cooperative Science Center, The City College of New York, NY 2002. Dr. Merchant has extensive knowledge and experience in Project Management, Planning, Assessment. Her research areas of Interest are – Environment Impact and Ecosystem Health Assessment.

In partnership with NOAA JPSS Program, developed NOAA JPSS Students Professional and Academic Readiness with Knowledge in Satellites (SPARKS) program to provide pre-workforce experiential and professional training to students, particularly from underrepresented minority community and woman of color in NOAA JPSS mission sciences by creating synergistic partnership with federal (NOAA) agency, academia, and private sectors. She has also been an instrumental and a key member in designing the Individualized Students Development Plan (ISDP) and Professional Advancement and Career Engagement (PACE) best practices at the Center and published several research and educational articles. She served on the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Education Symposium Committee in 2020-2023 and is currently serving as the co-chair of the AMS Education Conference Committee (2023-2026) and she leads the K12 informal learning initiatives at CCNY since 2010. She presented at several national conferences and has been invited to lead and/or serve on several panels including women leaders in STEM fields, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and STEM Education and Workforce Development Panels. Dr. Merchant has served as a program and career advisor and mentor for more than seven hundred (800) post-secondary students since 2002.

Panagiotis Mitsopoulos

Panagiotis Mitsopoulos is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Environmental Engineering program at the University of Connecticut. He received a B.Sc. in Physics and an M.Sc. in Oceanography from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. His research interests include in-situ and remote sensing observing networks focused on all marine metocean variables such as surface wind, waves, and surface currents. He also works on coastal modeling validation and coupled assimilation for wave and ocean regional models.

Dr. Saeed Moghimi

After completion of his Ph.D. in 2005, Dr. Saeed Moghimi spent four years in an assistant professor position in the Department of Civil Engineering of Arak University. In 2009, he was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship in Physical Oceanography at the Institute for Baltic Sea Research, Germany. His scientific research on model coupling, water column turbulence and mixing, wave modeling, coastal ocean circulation modeling, wave-current interaction and the use of data assimilation methods for predicting coastal ocean geophysical variables made him one of the few people with this caliber and expertise for tackling coastal modeling related problems.

Dr. Joseph Mouallem

Joseph is a Research Software Engineer/Computational Scientist currently working in the FV3 team at GFDL/NOAA and the Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System at Princeton University.

Prior to joining Princeton/GFDL in 2020, Joseph was a Postdoctoral Fellow and a sessional instructor at the department of mechanical and mechatronics engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2018 from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil in mechanical engineering and in 2014 a MSc in fluid mechanics from the INSA de Lyon, France.

He worked in several areas in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and now working on implementing new technologies and numerical capabilities in FV3 such as multiple same level and telescoping nesting and the duogrid.

Gian Giacomo Navarra

Gian Giacomo Navarra is a post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Program. His research is mostly devoted to the application of deep learning methods to the forecasting and understanding the dynamics of ecosystems in the North Pacific and their changes under the changing climate. Recently, he has been interested in investigating the nutrients dynamics in the Southern Ocean using advanced AI/ML explainable methods. He holds a Ph.D. in Ocean Science and Engineering from Georgia Tech and previously a BA equivalent degree in Theoretical Physics from the University of Trento (Italy).

Brianne Nelson

Brianne is an Associate Scientist at NCAR/RAL & DTC. She primarily works on testing and evaluation using METplus.

James Nelson

Jim hails from the Chicago area and has been a lifelong weather geek. He received his B.S. from Northern Illinois and a M.S from Texas A&M.

Jim joined the NWS as an agricultural meteorologist at Texas A&M. He then moved to Salt Lake City as a forecaster and became a lead forecaster there where he was fortunate enough to forecast for the 2002 Winter Olympics. During his time at SLC, he also worked on severe weather and ensemble forecasting research and wrote many technical and training documents for western region NWS forecasters. Jim moved to Anchorage, AK as a lead forecaster in 2003 and became the SOO there in 2007. Jim moved to his current position as Development and Training Branch Chief at WPC in 2016.

Kathryn Newman

Kathryn Newman is an Associate Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research/ Research Applications Laboratory and in the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC). Kathryn specializes in software support and testing and evaluation (T&E) activities in the DTC, with an emphasis on research-to-operations-to-research (R2O2R). She co-leads several tasks within the DTC, including Hurricane Application T&E and software support and using the Hierarchical System Development (HSD) approach to support UFS physics development.

William (Bill) L. Parker Jr.

Bill Parker currently serves as the Meteorologist-In-Charge of the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Jackson, MS, and is the Chairman of the NWS Southern Region BIDE Council. He strongly believes in serving his community and is a true and passionate diversity champion. Over his twenty-eight years of service within the National Weather Service, he has successfully recruited more than a hundred students to work in NOAA facilities through volunteer and internship opportunities. As a result, Bill has received 14 awards directly related to being a diversity champion and promoting STEM education and outreach for NOAA.

Dr. Linlin Pan

Dr. Pan is a Research Scientist at GSL for CIRES. His work primarily focuses on numerical model development, verification, and support. He participates in enhancing transition of innovations in NWP to NOAA’s operational UFS with FV3 dynamical core, as well as strengthening the development and support of the HWRF system.

Dr. Rajendra Panda

Raj worked in the area of High Performance Computing (HPC) at IBM, SGI/Cray and NOAA/NCEP. He led a worldwide team of application specialists in performance tuning and optimization work at IBM. He has been working with different teams at NOAA/NCEP in migrating applications and workflows to the Cloud. Raj has a Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Hari Ome Kumar Pandey

Hari is the Director of Met Simulation Private Unlimited.

Jun Park

Since Sep 2019, Jun Park has been researching radar DA using several numerical models, including GSI, JEDI, WRF, and FV3-LAM (UFS ATM) at CAPS. Jun merged the CAPS contribution on radar DA capabilities into GSI in 2019 and has been working on incorporating their code into the official JCSDA repository lately.

Dr. Luke Peffers

Dr. Peffers brings over 22 years of experience as an active-duty service member, a civil servant for the USAF, the Chief Scientists for a DoD contractor, an adjunct professor of Meteorology for Embry Riddle Aeronautical University’s Worldwide Campus and now as Chief Scientific Officer of Tomorrow.io. Dr. Peffers earned his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science in collaboration with the U.S. Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC). After earning his Ph.D., Dr. Peffers worked at AFTAC and became the branch chief of the Meteorological Modeling and Analysis team that is responsible for designing and operating weather modeling systems that are used to monitor compliance with multiple global nuclear test ban treaties. Dr. Peffers then joined STAR, LLC to serve as Chief Scientist where he managed numerous DoD contracts and projects involving the development and sustainment of operational weather models and weather-driven Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) forensic analysis and forecasting systems for various agencies within the DoD and international governments.

Philip Pegion

Mr. Philip Pegion is a physical scientist and deputy division chief for the Modeling and Data Assimilation Division within the Physical Sciences Laboratory of NOAA. He was previously with the University of Colorado, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). Mr. Pegion received his Master of Science in Meteorology from Florida State University in 1999 then worked in the NASA Seasonal-to-Interannual Prediction Project/Global Modeling and Assimilation office for over eight years, then one year at the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center before joining the University of Colorado in 2009. His current research focus is on improving numerical weather prediction through advances in atmospheric modeling, data assimilation, and better use of ensembles by better accounting of model uncertainty.

He has previously studied the role of SST forcing and atmospheric internal variability in limiting the predictability of seasonal climate, statistical post-processing of seasonal forecasts, initialization of the coupled model for ensemble forecasts, and supported the development of MERRA.

Dr. Malaquias Peña

Malaquías Peña is an Associate Professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Connecticut. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and a MSc. Degree from the University of Oklahoma both in Meteorology. He led various research projects for ensemble modeling and probabilistic forecasting at the Environmental Modeling Center, NCEP-NWS-NOAA. He has experience in seasonal weather prediction systems, observing networks, and data assimilation. He is currently leading a project funded by the NOAA-OAR-JTTI to develop a marine component for the 3DRTMA –a wind-wave-coupled data assimilation scheme consistent with a high-resolution Regional-MOM6 model. Dr. Peña also leads projects in coastal fine resolution modeling and underwater acoustic sensors in support of the offshore wind energy industry and the Office of Naval Research.

Dr. Natalie Perlin

Natalie Perlin, Ph.D., started to work on NOAA’s Earth Prediction Innovation Center project in 2022 after joining RedLine Performance Solutions as a Senior Systems Engineer. She is a member of EPIC’s Advanced Users Team (AUS), takes an active role in UFS development, and has conducted workshops on running UFS Short-Range Weather Application.

Dr. Perlin has a background in engineering meteorology, atmospheric sciences, and mesoscale meteorological modeling, and she holds a Ph.D. from Tel-Aviv University. She brings more than 25 years of experience in numerical modeling and model development in the areas of atmospheric and ocean sciences. Natalie worked on projects that included different aspects of modeling and data analysis, model improvement and software development for models’ community, design and implementation of coupled modeling systems, developing post-processing algorithms and visualization methods applied to observational and modeling data in environmental sciences, and also developed operational ocean forecast systems for the university research and showcase.

Gillian Petro

Gillian Petro is a technical writer for the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC). She has worked on documentation for the Short-Range Weather Application, the UFS Weather Model, the Land Data Assimilation System, and the Unified Post Processor. Gillian brings a diverse range of experience to the EPIC Program thanks to her previous work for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Baltimore City Public Schools, and the American University Law Review.

Gillian received an M.S. in Data Analytics from University of Maryland Global Campus and a J.D. from American University Washington College of Law. In law school, she served as senior staff on the American University Law Review, which published her legal commentary and provided ample opportunity to edit and fact-check legal scholarship.

Dr. Manuel Pondeca

Dr. Manuel Pondeca received a Ph.D. in Meteorology from Florida State University in 1996. He joined EMC in 2001 as a contractor and currently serves as lead developer of the NOAA operational RTMA/URMA system; he is also one of the managers for 3DRTMA development.

Dr. Jonathan Poterjoy

Dr. Jon Poterjoy is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland (UMD) Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science (AOSC), where he leads a research group that focuses on uncertainty quantification for geophysical applications, new data assimilation methodology, and Earth system prediction.

Dr. Aaron Pratt

Dr. Aaron Pratt is a Federal contractor with FedWriters, Inc. and provides program support to the Joint Technology Transfer Initiative (JTTI) program within the Weather Program Office (WPO). He plans and coordinates research goals and milestones for over 60 active projects within JTTI. He also serves as the lead for NOAA JTTI internal project competitions. Before joining the Weather Program Office, Aaron worked as a research scientist within the Technology, Planning, and Integration for Observation (TPIO; now the Policies, Procedures, and Systems Assurance Division, or PPSAD) division within the Office of Satellite Advanced Architecture Program. His work in TPIO focused on developing and utilizing the NOAA Observing System Integrated Analysis (NOSIA) decision support model for NOAA leadership to manage their observing system and product portfolios. He has also worked in the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA) as a scientific analyst. He is a former fellow of the NASA Postdoctoral Program. He has a B.S. in Meteorology from North Carolina State University, a M.S. in Meteorology from Pennsylvania State University, and a Ph.D. in atmospheric science from Howard University.

Dr. Zhaoxia Pu

Dr. Zhaoxia Pu is a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah. She is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and Royal Meteorological Society and a NOAA Science Advisory Board member. Her research is devoted to improving the prediction of high-impact weather and extremes. Areas of interest include numerical weather prediction, data assimilation, numerical modeling, and predictability.

Dr. Jim Purser

Dr. Jim Purser joined the UK Met Office in 1977 and worked in forecasting research. He visited CIMSS, UW-Madison, 1983-87, to develop the Recursive Filter analysis scheme with Kit Hayden, before resuming work at the Met Office. He returned to UW-Madison to finish his Ph.D. and began work at EMC in 1992 where, among other things, the recursive filter technique was developed with Dave Parrish and Wan-Shu Wu as the covariance scheme for the GSI. Now he works mainly on developing analysis techniques that use the multigrid approach with filters based on the beta distribution profile (with Misha Rancic and Manuel Pondeca).

Matthew Pyle

Matthew has spent his entire post-collegiate working career (spanning two millenia!) at the Environmental Modeling Center, working on regional and higher resolution atmospheric modeling systems. A recent focus has been on operational modeling implementations, taking scientific upgrades the final mile of the transition-to-operations (T2O) path, but he has also been the primary developer of the High Resolution Ensemble Forecast (HREF) system. In his free time, he enjoys running, homebrewing, and exploring the great outdoors.

William Ramstrom

William Ramstrom is a senior software engineer in the Modeling Group at NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division and U. Miami/CIMAS, focused on the development of moving nests in the Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS). He earned a B.S. in Computer Science and a M.S. in Atmospheric Science both from MIT. His prior work in the private sector included operational aviation weather forecasting, real-time WRF forecasts, radar data assimilation, and hurricane vortex initialization.

Dr. Miodrag Rancic

Dr. Miodrag Rancic received his Ph.D. in Meteorology (1988) from the School of Meteorology, University of Belgrade, Serbia. He held a postdoctoral appointment (1989-1992) at the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS) at the University of Oklahoma. He has been working ever since at NCEP on various problems of numerical modeling of atmosphere and data assimilation. For the last couple of years, he has been developing a new covariance operator at EMC working with 3DRTMA team.

Dr. Andrea Ray

Dr. Andrea Ray is a scientist at the NOAA Research Physical Sciences Lab (PSL), a coordinator for the NWS/OAR Hydrometeorological Testbed, and the Chair of the cross-NOAA Testbed and Proving Ground Coordinating Committee (TBPGCC). For most of her career, her work has focussed on understanding user needs across time scales and transitioning research into applications and use in a variety of contexts (R2X), as well as feeding back needs to research and X2R). Dr. Ray often serves as a connector or translator between the weather and climate research/info and the practitioners and researchers who use/could use it. She also works to assess the needs of a range of natural resources and other decision makers for weather, water and climate knowledge to better inform them about critical environmental vulnerabilities, and to cultivate community stakeholder relationships for NOAA science. Dr. Ray was involved for many years in the NOAA Regional Integrated Climate and Assessment (RISA) for the Interior West, and in 2020 she served as the acting Testbed Portfolio Manager for the NOAA Weather Program Office. She holds a Doctorate in Environment and Society Geography and a Certificate in Environmental Policy from the University of Colorado, a master’s in oceanography from the University of Delaware, and a bachelor’s in geophysical sciences from the University of Chicago.

Alexander Richert

Alex Richert works for RedLine Performance Solutions supporting NOAA EMC through its NCEPLIBS team. His experience includes HPC and cloud computing, as well as operational support for NWS forecasting models.

Daniel Rosen

Dan Rosen is a member of the ESMF core team and application developer specializing in Earth system model coupling using the NUOPC layer. He has worked on applications including the UFS Short-Range Weather application and the UFS Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System. He has designed and maintained NUOPC interface code for WRF-Hydro, LIS, COAMPS Atmosphere, ParFlow, UFSATM, and HyCOM.

Rebecca Schwantes

Rebecca Schwantes is a research chemist at the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Chemical Sciences Laboratory in Boulder, CO. Her research focuses on the development of reduced chemical mechanisms for use in regional and global atmospheric chemistry models to improve the simulation of air pollutants such as ozone and secondary organic aerosol.

Kathryn Sellwood

Kathryn attended the University of Miami graduating with an B.A. in meteorology and mathematics and a M.S. in meteorology and physical oceanography. She started working for UM at NOAA’s hurricane Research Division shortly after graduation as the Dropsonde Archivist. In addition to organizing and maintaining the archive she is an active participant in the hurricane field program, helping to collect and apply quality control to the dropsonde observations. Kathryn’s research focuses on evaluating new observing systems and strategies and data assimilation. Currently she is working towards implementing the assimilation of Small Uncrewed Aircraft System (sUAS) observations and improving the use of dropsonde data within the HAFS model.

Dr. Greg Seroka

Greg Seroka is an oceanographer and meteorologist with the Office of Coast Survey in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Dr. Seroka supports marine navigation and disaster mitigation through several projects. He recently led an effort to operationalize and upgrade a state-of-the-art global model for forecasting storm surge and tides; serves as Project Manager for an effort to improve its performance in the Pacific region; and is currently leading operational transition of annual upgrades to the model’s global, and Atlantic and Pacific three-dimensional components. These forecast tools are essential for safe and efficient marine navigation and for protecting coastal communities during storms. Dr. Seroka is also involved with an international effort to standardize oceanographic data for mariners, such as water levels and surface water currents, which are important for developing coherent marine navigation systems across international waters.

Prior to his work at NOAA, Greg earned his Ph.D. in physical oceanography from Rutgers University with a Graduate Certificate in Energy, where his research improved hurricane intensity forecasts and assessed offshore wind energy resources in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic. He received his master’s in atmospheric science from Texas A&M, where he worked on improving lightning forecasts, and his bachelor’s (honors) in meteorology from Penn State where he served as President of the Campus Weather Service.

Dr. Christopher Spells

Chris Spells is a Physical Scientist in NOAA/OAR’s Weather Program Office (WPO) Supplemental Program where he serves as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Lead. In this role, Chris is leading the coordination, execution, reporting, and messaging of the Service Delivery/Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science projects that are part of the Flood and Inundation Mapping and Forecasting focus area.

Chris also supports the execution and reporting of 3 Disaster Supplemental portfolios where he provides oversight for projects that are contributing to improvements in weather, hurricane, flood, and wildfire forecasts as well as advancements in data assimilation from observations to improve forecasts. He has co-authored 3 reports communicating results and societal benefits of the portfolio that have been shared with NOAA leadership and congressional stakeholders.

Before coming to WPO, Chris provided programmatic support at the NOAA Office of Satellite and Products Operations (OSPO) where he worked as a scientific programmer developing applications for the Hazard Mapping System (HMS), the Ice Mapping System (IMS), and the Ozone Mapping Profiling Suite (OMPS).

Chris enjoyed participating in field research, including the Aerosol and Ocean Sciences Expedition (AEROSE) research missions onboard the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown. During these missions, he conducted research to improve understanding of the physical, chemical, and biological evolution of Saharan and sub-Saharan aerosols during transport across the tropical Atlantic Ocean. He specifically focused on improving space-based atmospheric retrievals in Saharan dust laden air masses over the tropical Atlantic Ocean.

Chris earned a B.A. in Earth and Planetary Science from Johns Hopkins University and earned a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from Hampton University.

Alekya Srinivasan

Alekya Srinivasan is a rising senior at Penn State University studying meteorology and atmospheric science with a minor in climatology. She is a student intern with the William M. Lapenta NOAA Student Internship Program as the first ever Student Ambassador for the Unified Forecast System (UFS) through the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) and Weather Program Office (WPO). She is working under the mentorship of Jennifer Vogt, Krishna Kumar, Maoyi Huang, and Neil Jacobs. Her project entails strengthening the relationship between numerical weather prediction, the UFS, and university-level meteorological/atmospheric/climate science curricula by creating a UFS Student Engagement Plan. She will also be evaluating UFS applications to provide a student perspective to inform future tutorials and user support. She is very excited to have the opportunity to speak at and attend UIFCW!

Dr. Lydia Stefanova

Dr. Stefanova is a physical scientist with Lynker working at NCEP/EMC since 2018, leading evaluations of the NCEP/EMC Global Coupled UFS in support of coupled model development targeting operational GFS, GEFS, and SFS. In this role she coordinates and performs assessments of the coupled UFS and its components at all stages of model development. This encompasses examining raw and post-processed output from test runs to aid debugging; evaluating initial conditions to ensure consistency; evaluating the impact of specific model formulation changes to ensure technical and scientific integrity; and evaluating forecasts on sub-daily to seasonal time scales to quantify skill and errors and track progress. She holds a Ph.D. in Meteorology from Florida State University, and a bachelor’s equivalent in Physics from Sofia State University.

Sulagna Ray

Sulagna Ray is a physical oceanographer by training working towards understanding the physical processes driving upper ocean variability relevant to predictions across time-scales. As a climate scientist, she is involved in model diagnostics, building tools and metrics for evaluating ocean-atmosphere interactive processes in next-generation climate models.

Fabrizio Sassi

Fabrizio Sassi is a Research Astrophysicist in the Ionosphere, Thermosphere and Magnetosphere Physics Laboratory of the Heliophysics Science Division of NASA/GSFC. His science interests are whole atmosphere interactions, thermosphere-ionosphere coupling, and magnetosphere-ionosphere physics. He leads various NASA/GSFC projects to develop a whole atmosphere model for NASA and community applications.

Shan Sun

Shan Sun is the chief of the S2S branch at the Earth Prediction Advancement Division in the Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) at NOAA. She came to GSL from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, where she played a key role in the development of a coupled atmosphere-ocean-sea ice model that was included in the multi-model ensemble in IPCC AR5/AR6. Her focus at GSL is on the development of coupled models for subseasonal to seasonal applications. She is a principal developer of the global coupled FIM/HYCOM model for subseasonal forecast, a member in the SubX experiment. She has multi-year hands-on experience working with atmosphere, ocean, sea-ice and aerosols modules in the Unified Forecast System. Her research interests range from short-term numerical weather prediction, subseasonal to seasonal predictability, ocean-atmosphere interaction, to oceanic thermohaline circulation and climate change and variability.

Dustin Swales

Dustin Swales works at NOAA-GSL developing model-physics infrastructure (ccpp-framework) and supports physics development (ccpp-physics) at GSL for NOAA’s UFS Weather Model.

Travis Sluka

Travis Sluka is a computational scientist and the project lead for the Sea-ice Ocean and Coupled Assimilation (SOCA) project at the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA). There he works to develop cutting-edge marine data assimilation systems scheduled to be adopted for the upcoming operational systems at NOAA/EMC and NASA/GMAO.

Dr. Vijay Tallapragada

Dr. Vijay Tallapragada is the Senior Scientist (ST) for Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) of National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) in College Park, MD, since August 2022, responsible for providing strategic direction for implementation of community-based modeling systems within the Unified Forecast System (UFS) framework for operational applications at NCEP. Dr. Tallapragada is co-leading the UFS Research to Operations (UFS-R2O) Project with participation from larger NWP enterprise in advancing the development of a comprehensive UFS coupled Earth System Model for various forecast applications. Prior to that, he was the Chief of Modeling and Data Assimilation Branch and Global Climate and Weather Modeling Branch at NCEP/EMC during 2015-2022 where he led the development, implementation, and advancement of NCEP operational Modeling Systems spanning weather, subseasonal and seasonal timescales for providing accurate and reliable forecast guidance. In his previous role as the Hurricane Team Leader at NCEP from 2006 to 2015, Dr. Tallapragada developed and implemented the state-of-the-art hurricane models for operational tropical cyclone predictions across the globe.

Dr. Tallapragada is also serving as the Co-PI for the Atmospheric River (AR) Reconnaissance Program and co-chairs the AR Data Assimilation and Modeling Steering Committee. In addition, he is also the Development Manager for NOAA’s Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP). Dr. Tallapragada serves on various national and international advisory committees for operational Numerical Weather Prediction, research programs, and observational field campaigns.

Apart from recognition at various levels, Dr. Tallapragada is the recipient of the NOAA National Weather Service Isaac Cline Award for Scientific Leadership in 2013, US Dept. of Commerce Gold Medal for HWRF in 2014, NOAA Administrator’s Award for Next-Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS) in 2017, US Dept. of Commerce Gold Medal for Global Forecast System (GFS) in 2020, Robert & Joanne Simpson Award for Tropical Meteorology in 2022, American Meteorological Society (AMS) Banner Miller Award and Weather and Forecasting Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award in 2019, and is elected as Fellow of the AMS in 2022. He holds a Ph.D. in Tropical Meteorology, M.Tech. Degree in Atmospheric Science and M.S. Degree in Meteorology from Andhra University in India and has more than 150 refereed publications in various journals of international reputation. He has supervised five Ph.D. students and three masters’ students.

Dr. John Ten Hoeve

John Ten Hoeve, Ph.D. is the Deputy Director of the NOAA Weather Program Office (WPO). In his role, he oversees all divisions and activities in the office, and has taken the lead on the WPO 2022-2026 Strategic Plan. Prior to WPO, John served as the Deputy Director of the Office of Organizational Excellence in NOAA’s National Weather Service where he played a leading role in NWS strategy, fostering partnerships with the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise, and enabling NWS to become a more agile and effective organization by improving organizational processes and culture. John helped design and establish the first organizational health and culture program at the NWS, which has influenced nearly all offices across the agency, and also served as the NWS line office representative to NOAA’s Regional Collaboration Network.

Dr. Yi-Cheng Teng

Dr. Yi-Cheng Teng holds a Ph.D. in Marine Science from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), College of William and Mary. With over 15 years of expertise in physical oceanography and numerical modeling, Yi-Cheng brings extensive knowledge to the field. Prior to joining Tomorrow.io and the NOAA EPIC Program, Yi-Cheng served as an assistant professor and principal investigator, leading various projects supported by prestigious organizations such as NSF, DOE, and NOAA. Currently, Yi-Cheng holds the position of senior software engineer/scientist and Product Owner at NOAA EPIC, contributing to cutting-edge advancements in the field.

Dr. Hendrik Tolman

Dr. Ir. Hendrik L. Tolman is the Senior Advisor for Advanced Modeling Systems of the Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI) of the National Weather Service (NWS). Before joining OSTI, he was at the Environmental modeling Center (EMC) of the NWS for more that 20 years, as wave modeler (original development of WAVEWATCH III), Marine Modeling Branch Chief and Director. As senior advisor Dr. Tolman champions the Unified Forecast System (UFS), the use of social and behavioral science in forecasting, and represents the NWS at the NOAA Artificial Intelligence Executive Committee.

Dr. Tolman holds a Doctorate (Dr., Ph.D. equivalent) and Engineering degree (Ir., master’s equivalent) from the Civil Engineering Department of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He is a naturalized US citizen of Dutch origin.

Dr. Panagiotis Velissariou

Dr. Panagiotis Velissariou is a coastal engineer and modeler with scientific interests in coastal processes, sediment transport, wave-current interactions, storm surge modeling, coastal/regional forecasting and the development of coupled modeling systems. A Greek native, Dr. Velissariou received his B.Sc. in Agricultural Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, his M.Sc. in Water Resources Engineering from the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio and his Ph.D. in Coastal and Ocean Engineering from the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. He was a member of the group that developed and maintained the award winning Great Lakes Forecasting System (GLFS). In 2011, Dr. Velissariou moved to Tallahassee, Florida where he accepted a research scientist position at the Center of Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (COAPS) at Florida State University (FSU), and worked on model coupling using HYCOM, ROMS, SWAN, WAVEWATCH III, WRF, and the Community Earth System (CESM) models. While at FSU, he developed the Gulf of Mexico Earth Forecasting System (GoM-EFS) a three dimensional prediction system for the Gulf of Mexico that links coastal/ocean processes with the atmosphere using multi-model components and algorithms. In 2018, Dr. Velissariou joined the National Water Center (NOAA/NWS/OWP), Tuscaloosa, Alabama as a senior coastal scientist where he worked in the development of a coupled modeling system between the National Water Model (NWM), and the DFlow FM and ADCIRC hydrodynamic models to create a comprehensive and efficient numerical framework for total water and flood inundation forecasting at the Eastern US. Coast that simulates interactions of inland hydrologic processes, freshwater stream-flows, tides, surges and winds under normal and extreme event conditions. He is currently a senior coastal scientist and modeler at the Coastal Marine Modeling Branch (CMMB) of the Office of Coast Survey (OCS) at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration National Ocean Service (NOAA/NOS) where he is leading the development efforts of the HSOFS forecast system and the development of the CoastalApp framework a fully coupled, NUOPC/ESMF enabled modeling system for coastal studies. He is also the developer of the Parametric Hurricane Modeling System (PaHM) that generates on-demand atmospheric wind fields from hurricane track data. Dr. Velissariou can be contacted by email: panagiotis.velissariou@noaa.gov or by phone at (205) 227-9141.

Dr. Paul Ullrich

Dr. Paul Ullrich is the lead of climate resilience at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a professor of regional and global climate modeling at the University of California, Davis. His work focuses on development and analysis of regional climate information, with a focus on the credibility and salience of climate datasets. He works closely with stakeholder groups across the United States to understand their needs for climate data, and to understand how regional climate and extreme weather are being affected by climate change.

Dr. Yan Xue

Yan Xue manages the Weeks 3-4 Program and Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) grants within the NWS Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI) Modeling Program Division. The Weeks 3-4 Program supports the improvement of Weeks 3-4 forecast products at NWS, development and implementation of the next-generation subseasonal Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS) under the Unified Forecast System (UFS) Framework. She is also leading the planning for the development and implementation of the first UFS-based Seasonal Forecast System (SFS). Prior to joining OSTI-Modeling, Yan had worked at the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) of NCEP for 18 years, working on climate variability and predictability, subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction, coupled model analysis, ocean monitoring, coupled reanalysis, and observing system experiments.

Yan completed her undergraduate work at University of Science and Technology of China with a B.A. in Physics and graduate work at Columbia University with a M.S. and Ph.D. in Geophysical Science.

Dr. Jonathan Vigh

Dr. Vigh leads several hurricane-related projects within RAL and serves as a support scientist on several other projects. He is the leader of the WxRisk project, which is building personalized weather risk tools such as the HurricaneRiskCalculator web app. Dr. Vigh is also the Principal Investigator (PI) of a joint project with Colorado State University and the University of Miami which is implementing forecast support products of tropical cyclone (TC) intensity and structure from aircraft reconnaissance observations. Dr. Vigh is serving in the project manager role for another project which is implementing TC diagnostics in the METplus software package. Dr. Vigh is also working in a support scientist role to develop an evaluation system for space weather using METplus.

In addition to these projects, Dr. Vigh is the lead developer of the Tropical Cyclone Guidance Project (TCGP), which provides real-time model guidance for TCs, and the Climate Risk Management Engine (CRMe), which supports climate science and risk applications. Dr. Vigh also writes research papers, develops funding proposals, and participates in service activities. He also collaborates internationally to improve TC data sharing.

Jonathan Vigh’s research interests include tropical cyclones and risk communication. He has studied the problem of eye formation in hurricanes and other geophysical vortices to learn how the eye/eyewall structure impacts the subsequent intensification of the storm. He has also done extensive work to construct several new aircraft-based data sets to further investigate structure and intensity changes in tropical cyclones, with a particular focus on the radius of maximum winds (RMW). He is working to use ensembles to better predict TC RI. Finally, he is working to improve hazard and risk communication for TCs.

Kevin Viner

Kevin Viner has been working at the Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) since 2022 as a dynamics expert and local project lead for the Whole Atmosphere Model (WAM) extension of FV3. Formerly, he worked at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRLMRY) as lead model developer of NAVGEM and contributor to NEPTUNE model development. His interests include numerical methods, dynamical systems, NWP, physics-dynamics coupling, and mountain waves.

Jennifer (Jen) Vogt

Jennifer Vogt is a Project Coordinator supporting the NOAA/OAR/WPO Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) through Cherokee Nation.Throughout the past two years, she has helped accelerate modeling initiatives across NOAA through work with the NOAA Modeling Team, setting up the Community Modeling Board and through research initiatives funded by EPIC. Jennifer is thrilled to be a co-mentor to a William M. Lapenta intern this summer, who will be creating a student engagement plan for the Unified Forecast System (UFS). Prior to joining EPIC, Jennifer worked as a National Weather Service (NWS) Meteorologist for seven years at Weather Forecast Offices located in Albany, NY and Jackson, KY. Jennifer is excited to be an integral part of the EPIC Team as it allows for her to combine her forecasting knowledge and outreach with EPIC’s mission to accelerate community and research innovations into the nation’s modeling system

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Hongli Wang

Hongli Wang is currently a research scientist at CIRES/CU and GSL/NOAA. Hongli’s research interests are: 3/4D variational/ensemble data assimilation techniques, mesoscale and storm scale radar and satellite data assimilation, numerical weather and air quality modeling and prediction, and adaptive/targeted observations.

Siyuan Wang

Siyuan Wang is a research scientist working on various topics including wildfire impacts on air quality and climate system, chemistry-climate interactions, etc.

Dr. Weiguo Wang

Meteorologist, Ph.D from Penn State. Working on HAFS development with focus on TC physics.

Dr. Xuguang Wang

Dr. Xuguang Wang obtained her B.S. in Atmospheric Science from Beijing University, China and her Ph.D. in Meteorology from the Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Wang is currently a Robert Lowry Chair Professor and Presidential Research Professor of the School of Meteorology at University of Oklahoma (OU). She leads a Multiscale data Assimilation and Predictability (MAP) lab at OU. Her research ranges from developing novel methodologies for data assimilation and ensemble prediction to applying these methods for global, hurricane, and convective-scale numerical weather prediction systems that assimilate a variety of in-situ and remote-sensing observations. She has published more than 120 papers in peer-reviewed journals. The data assimilation research and development by the OU MAP team have been adopted by multiple US NOAA NWS operational modeling suites. Dr. Wang is also excited about cultivating the next-generation workforce in data assimilation. So far she has directly advised 17 M.S. students, 19 Ph.D. students and 21 postdocs during her tenure at OU. Dr. Wang also takes community scientific leadership role such as serving as a co-lead of the observation and data assimilation task team to perform US Congress mandated Priorities for Weather Research (PWR) study, a member of UCAR Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) science advisory board and WMO WWRP Predictability, Dynamics and Ensemble Forecasting working group.

Yongming Wang

Yongming Wang is a research scientist who has worked at the MAP Lab, School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma since 2016. Yongming’s research focuses on developing and advancing multiscale data assimilation methods to improve convective-scale forecasts.

Dr. Zhuo Wang

Dr. Zhuo Wang is a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has served as editor of the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, chair of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones, co-chair of the US CLIVAR PPAI panel, and co-chair of the WMO Working Group on Tropical Meteorology Research (TMR). Her research mainly focuses on tropical meteorology, climate dynamics, and subseasonal to decadal prediction and predictability of extreme weather and climate.

Dr. Shih-Wei Wei

Dr. Shih-Wei Wei is a postdoctoral fellow at JCSDA. Shih-Wei’s Ph.D. work focused on assimilating aerosol-affected infrared observations. As a postdoctoral fellow in the COMPO team at JCSDA, Shih-Wei works on the Level 1 aerosol data assimilation.

Dr. Valerie Were

Valerie Were, Ph.D. is a Social and Behavioral Science Program Analyst with the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA). In that role, she helps the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Program at the National Weather Service (NWS) turn weather, water, and climate information into social action by integrating social with physical sciences. Before joining CIRA in August 2021, Valerie was the Social Science Lead at the NOAA Cooperative Science Center for Earth System Sciences and Remote Sensing Technologies where she was responsible for incorporating human dimensions into the Center’s education, training, and research. Prior to that, she was a contractor in the NOAA Chief Economist’s Office, which coordinates social sciences across the agency. Valerie holds a B.S. in Watershed Science from Utah State University and survived the winters to earn an M.S. in Water Resources Science and a Ph.D. in Natural Resources Science and Management from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. When she’s not working she’s likely enjoying an outdoor activity, watching sports, reading, or replacing the house plants she can’t seem to keep alive.

Dr. David Walters

David leads the UK Met Office’s Research to Operations (R2O) team, who develop, deliver and coordinate upgrades to the operational Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) suite and coordinate and improve the Met Office’s wider R2O activity. The R2O team collaborates with model development, observation applications and data assimilation scientists on research projects to improve components of the NWP systems and pull these through into operational use. They also liaise with the technology teams responsible for configuring and routinely running the operational forecasts to improve the processes for testing and delivering these developments. Finally, R2O scientists work closely with users of operational output, including operational forecasters, to understand the wider impacts of changes. This helps inform decision making during development projects and feeds back into the Met Office’s future research plans.

David’s personal research interests include the role of resolution in global atmospheric model performance and the extension of short-range NWP forecasts to include increased Earth system complexity such as additional land-surface processes, ocean-atmosphere coupling and the inclusion of chemistry and aerosols.

David joined the Met Office in 2004 and worked on global and regional atmospheric NWP model development. Between 2010 and 2017, David managed the Global Atmospheric Model Development group, responsible for developing global configurations of the Unified Model for use across all weather and climate timescales. He has been leading the R2O team since 2017.

Joannes Westerink

Joannes Westerink is the Joseph and Nona Ahearn Professor of Computational Science and Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. Westerink develops high-resolution heterogeneous unstructured mesh, multi-physics, multi-scale hydrodynamic codes and models for the hydrodynamics of the coastal ocean and has successfully transitioned these to practitioners for a wide range of applications including the analysis and design of major flood control projects and coastal ocean water level forecasting systems. Westerink has pioneered the successful use of global to channel scale highly heterogeneous unstructured mesh coastal ocean models with mesh resolution varying by up to four orders of magnitude. This encompasses the optimization of algorithms; development of high performance codes in vector and parallel computing environments; the linkages of circulation models to weather and short wind wave models; model verification, validation, and uncertainty quantification; and the application of codes to oceans, continental shelf regions, estuaries, rivers, and coastal flood plains. Westerink is the co-developer, with Rick Luettich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Clint Dawson of the University of Texas at Austin, of the widely used ADCIRC finite element based shallow water equation code. ADCIRC has evolved into a community based coastal hydrodynamics code with wide ranging applications within academia, government, and the private sector worldwide. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration all use ADCIRC in support of coastal water level and flooding analyses and forecasts.

Dr. Louis J. Wicker

Dr. Louis J. Wicker has a broad set of research interests that generally are focused on numerical analysis, simulation, and forecasts of severe convection and tornadoes. His original research interests in supercells and tornadoes can be traced back nearly to his high school days in the late 1970s. While obtaining his undergraduate and master’s degrees at University of Oklahoma in the 1980s, he became an avid storm chaser and eventually was fortunate enough to work on some of the first in-situ deployments of instruments near severe storms with his mentors: Howie Bluestein (OU) and later Don Burgess and Bob Davies-Jones (NSSL). He caught the modeling bug while doing work with Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen on satellite temperature assimilation for his master’s degree. He left Oklahoma in the summer of 1986 to begin a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois. He was fortunate to have Dr. Robert Wilhelmson as his dissertation advisor and together, they investigated tornadogenesis within supercells using some of the first sub-200m resolution numerical simulations. The work was facilitated and supported by one of the five original and newly formed NSF computing centers, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. He became very interested in the developing paradigm of “computational science” that is now ubiquitous across most scientific disciplines. During most of the 1990s, he was a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University. In 1999, he was able to return to his meteorological roots in Norman as a scientist at the National Severe Storms Lab. His work today continues to focus on severe storms and tornadoes. The tremendous effort and resulting progress by hundreds of scientists during the past 30 years has led to a substantial increase in our scientific understanding of severe weather, and this progress has led to improved forecasts and more accurate warnings for the U.S. public.

Jeffrey Whitaker

Jeff Whitaker is a research meteorologist at the Physical Sciences Laboratory of the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories in Boulder, Colorado. His research is focused on the use of ensembles in weather forecasting and data assimilation.

Dr. Leticia Williams

Dr. Leticia Williams is a Program Specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and she focuses on National Weather Service (NWS) Priority Actions for service equity initiatives and the integration of social, behavioral, and economic sciences (SBES) in services and products. Dr. Williams was previously the communications expert for the Coastal ACT, focusing on using social science methodology to support the transition of NOAA’s Coastal Weather and Water Event Database (CWWEED) from experimentation to operations with COASTAL ACT federal partners (e.g., FEMA, USGS). Prior to her work at the NWS, Dr. Williams was a research scientist for the NOAA Center for Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology (NCAS-M) at Howard University. Her work focused on the integration of social, behavioral, economic, and communication sciences (SBEC), and prioritized advancing theoretical findings and applied research to understand the societal impacts of weather events, improve weather and air forecasting, and support operations in the forecast community. This was a continuation of Dr. Williams’ work as the inaugural NCAS-M SBEC postdoctoral fellow, where she implemented social science methods at the NWS Operations Division to expand the research program for core partners (e.g., emergency managers) and the general public through interdisciplinary projects for surveys, Impact-based Decision Support Services (IDSS), and service assessments. Dr. Williams earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California, a master’s degree in communication from CSU Fresno, and doctorate in science communication at Howard University. Her research focuses on broadening participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through multicultural mentoring practices and how science communication can be used to increase knowledge and preparedness for severe weather.

Brandon Wolding

Brandon Wolding began his work at NOAA PSL as a NOAA Climate and Global Change fellow in 2018, investigating the role of moisture in convective coupling. In August of 2020 he joined the Atmosphere-Ocean Processes team, helping develop process-oriented diagnostics aimed at improving model representation of organized tropical convection. His previous work includes examining how tropical-extratropical interactions will change in a warming climate, furthering understanding of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), and the role of air-sea interactions in the MJO. Brandon first worked for NOAA as an observer biologist aboard longline tuna and swordfish boats in the Hawaiian and American Samoan fisheries.

Claudia Womble

Claudia serves as a Management and Program Analyst in the NOAA/OAR/Weather Program Office and is the Contracting Officer Representative for the Earth Prediction Innovation Center contract. She is FAC-C and FAC-COR Level III certified and holds a Master of Science in Procurement and Contracts Management from the University of Maryland as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Winston-Salem State University.

Denise Worthen

Denise Worthen is a code manager for the UFS Weather Model with primary responsibility for the coupled applications. She is also code manager for the CMEPS mediator and CICE6 sea ice model.

Dr. Z. George Xue

Dr. Xue heads the LSU Coupled Ocean Modeling group, the largest regional modeling group in the Gulf of Mexico and the top supercomputer user in the State of Louisiana. Dr. Xue is using a state-of-the-art numerical technique to represent the interaction between land and ocean processes along the gulf coast. Dr. Xue is building the nation’s first coupled land-ocean forecast system incorporating weather and water quality conditions of both the Mississippi River Basin and the Gulf of Mexico.

Every year Dr. Xue’s group consumes more than 10 million Service Units (an hour per core) to simulate and assess a wide range of coastal hazards, including hurricanes, compound flooding, land loss, eutrophication, hypoxia, ocean acidification, and others. Since joining LSU in 2014, Dr. Xue has raised more than $13.6 million in extramural funds for LSU from various federal and state agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Louisiana Board of Regions, and others. Recently Dr. Xue is named a 2022 LSU Rainmaker Mid-Career Scholar, which is the most prestigious LSU award to recognize excellence and outstanding achievement in research and creative activity.

Dr. Fanglin Yang

Dr. Yang obtained his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Currently he serves as the Chief of the Model Physics Group at NOAA Environmental Modeling Center (EMC)  to oversee all model physics related activities. He worked on the development, diagnosis and evaluation of the Global Forecasts Systems (GFS) at EMC from 2004 to 2020. Before joining EMC, he worked at NOAA Climate Prediction Center and then at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for a few years. Dr. Yang has published more than  40 peer-reviewed journal articles on climate diagnosis and modeling and numerical weather  prediction. He served as reviewers for multiple scientific journals and US grant agencies.

Yue Yang

Yue Yang is a Research Fellow from the University of Oklahoma. Her main area of interest is to develop and understand the convective-scale radar data assimilation for WRF model and FV3-LAM.

Li Zhang

Li Zhang’s work focuses on the development of complex coupled modeling systems to simulate atmospheric composition, air quality, weather and their interactions.

Dr. Shuxia Zhang

Dr. Shuxia Zhang has a Ph.D in Geophysics and a MBA in Finance and joined Engelhart in March, 2022. Shuxia has 20+ years of experience with performance/analytics for CFD and financial workloads over a variety of HPC platforms. In the past 5 years, Shuxia established a track record of successes in performance optimization and significant cost reduction with weather forecasts on Amazon cloud.

Xiaoyan Zhang

Xiaoyan Zhang is a Senior Physical Scientist at the Science Application International Corp. (SAIC) and works full time at NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS)/National Center of Environmental Prediction (NCEP). Xiaoyan’s research involves the development, improvement and application of state-of-the-art numerical weather models and integration of remote sensing data towards a better understanding of the convective-scale weather and forecast.

Dr. Xuejin Zhang

Dr. Xuejin Zhang is a Meteorologist employed in NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory’s Hurricane Research Division. He studies tropical cyclone forecast and simulation, land-air-sea interaction, regional climate, and parallel computing during his more than two-decade career. His expertise is in numerical algorithms, atmospheric dynamics, model initialization, and microphysics parameterization. He is currently leading the NOAA’s Unified Forecast System (UFS) R2O Hurricane Application Team. He obtained his Ph.D. in NC State University.

Dr. Zhan Zhang

Dr. Zhan Zhang obtained his Ph.D degree in tropical meteorology from Florida State University. He has worked at various research and operational organizations. He is now a physical scientist affiliated with the National Centers for Environmental Prediction’s Environmental modeling center (EMC) at NOAA. He is the Hurricane Modelling team lead at EMC, and the co-lead of NOAA’s Unified Forecast System (UFS) research and operation (R2O) Hurricane Application Team. He specializes in Numerical Weather Prediction modeling, especially in tropical cyclone modeling. His research interests include hurricane ensemble forecasts, vortex initialization, and hurricane inner-core data assimilation.

Dr. Ping Zhu

Dr. Ping Zhu obtained his Ph.D. in Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, in 2002. His research focuses on turbulence, clouds, hurricanes, and physics parameterization in numerical models. Currently, Dr. Ping Zhu is a professor at the Department of Earth and Environment, Florida International University.

Yuejian Zhu

Yuejian Zhu is a Research Meteorologist and team leader of the ensemble development team at NOAA/NWS/NCEP Environmental Modeling Center and also serves as an adjunct professor at the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST) and an advisor of the National Meteorological Center of China. Yuejian is a member of WMO/WWRP/WGNE/JWGFVR Joint Working Group on Forecast Verification Research, US NWS Representative for WMO CBS ETEPS (Expert Team on Ensemble Prediction System), member of WMO/WWRP/THORPEX/GIFS-TIGGE Working Group, member of WMO/WWRP/TLFDP International Science Steering Committee (ISSC), co-leader of the NAEFS (Northern American Ensemble Forecast System) Project for Science and Technology, co-leader, and member of the NUOPC (National Unified Operational Prediction Capability) UEO (Unify Ensemble Operation) Committee.