The Unidata Program Center is pleased to welcome new members to the program's governing committees. Committee members normally serve three-year terms; terms are finishing up for six members of the Users committee and three members of the Strategic Advisory committee, which has been missing one member since fall of 2014. New members and those finishing their terms will overlap for one meeting, which will take place at the end of September (see Joint Users and Strategic Advisory Committee meeting).
The UPC staff looks forward to working with our new committee members, and to having all the current members of both committees at the Program Center in Boulder, Colorado this fall.
The following provides a brief introduction to the scientists joining Unidata's committees. You can additional information about the governing committees, including contact information for committee members, on the Governing Committees page.
Jennifer Collins, Strategic Advisory Committee
Dr. Jennifer Collins is an Associate Professor in the School of Geosciences at the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on weather and climate. As a hurricane researcher, she is interested in the interaction between large scale climatic patterns such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Madden-Julian Oscillation and seasonal and intra-seasonal patterns of tropical cyclone activity in multiple oceanic basins.
Dr. Collins is active in the Tampa area meteorological community, and was elected President of the West Central Florida Chapter of the American Meteorological Society in 2010 (and every year since). She served on the Unidata Users Committee from 2011 until 2014.
Steve Decker, Users Committee
Dr. Steven Decker is an Assistant Teaching Professor and Meteorology Undergraduate Program Director at Rutgers University. In addition to teaching duties including synoptic meteorology and numerical methods in atmospheric sciences, he has created software (wrf2gem) that converts data from netCDF to GEMPAK format.
“I use GEMPAK extensively in the classroom, but I can see in the short- to medium-term transitioning to the IDV, AWIPS II, and/or Python,” says Decker. “I am excited to learn about and advocate for developments in those areas at Unidata that would be especially useful in the classroom.”
Wendilyn Flynn, Users Committee
Dr. Wendilyn Flynn is an Assistant Professor of Meteorology at the University of Northern Colorado. She received her doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012.
Dr. Flynn's research is centered around mesoscale meteorology and land surface — atmosphere interaction, utilizing numerical modeling as well as remotely-sensed and in-situ observations. Her current work focuses on mesoscale precipitation patterns in complex terrain of western Mexico and western India through regional climate simulations with the WRF model.
Dr. Flynn has been a user of Unidata products since her undergraduate days and is enthusiastic about “bringing data and dynamical concepts to life” with IDV and GEMPAK for students in her upper-level undergraduate meteorology courses, especially Synoptic Meteorology, Mesoscale Meteorology, and Radar and Satellite Meteorology.
“Using modern software tools for data analysis and visualization is an essential component of an undergraduate education in meteorology, and Unidata has been an incredibly valuable resource in this respect, ” says Dr. Flynn. “I'm eagerly looking forward to serving on the Users Committee to help guide the development of Unidata products in a way that makes them even more useful within the educational community.”
Victor Gensini, Users Committee
Dr. Victor Gensini is an Associate Professor of Meteorology at College of DuPage. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Georgia in 2014. He maintains the popular NEXLAB weather data website which makes extensive use of Unidata's LDM, GEMPAK, and McIDAS programs. This website (weather.cod.edu) serves millions of private sector, academic, and government users every month.
Dr. Gensini's research focuses on subseasonal forecasting of severe convective storms and future climate projections of hazardous convective weather. Dr. Gensini currently teaches a variety of undergraduate courses, including “Weather Analysis and Forecasting,“ which leverages Unidata products in the college's weather laboratory.
“Data display, visualization, and analysis is vital to geoscience research and curriculum,” says Dr. Gensini. “Unidata is a leader in this area and I look forward to contributing to the future of this invaluable resource.”
Steven Lazarus, Strategic Advisory Committee
Dr. Steven Lazarus is a full Professor at the Florida Institute of Technology's College of Engineering, Marine and Environmental Systems. His research focuses on mesoscale analysis, surface wind data assimilation, coastal meteorology, wind/wave modeling, and transient luminous events (TLEs, upward lightning from thunderstorms). He's been at Florida Tech since 2001 and currently teaches Atmospheric Remote Sensing, Weather Briefing, Dynamic Meteorology, and a segment on climate change in an interdisciplinary freshman course called the Whole Earth. He's currently involved in a NOAA funded CSTAR project with the NWS involving wind forced set-up over a local estuary. Dr. Lazarus received his BS at Florida State, and M.S. and Ph. D. at the University of Oklahoma.
Dr. Lazarus served on the Unidata Users Committee from 2009 through 2015.
Pete Pokrandt, Users Committee
Peter Pokrandt has been the computer systems administrator for the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1995. He received a Masters Degree in Atmospheric Science from UW-Madison in 1992 for his work on a numerical modeling study of Polar Lows. Following that degree, he was involved in a modeling study investigating the origin mechanisms behind a Midwest U.S. mesoscale gravity wave event.
Mr. Pokrandt became familiar with GEMPAK and the Unidata LDM as a graduate student, and was involved with the Internet Data Distribution project (IDD), along with the high-volume IDD CONDUIT data feed. He still uses GEMPAK to process data and create custom UW-AOS web site plots, which are used in various classes and by the general public. He has helped with the use of the Unidata IDV in the classroom, most notably in the Satellite and Radar remote sensing class. As the systems administrator at Wisconsin, Mr. Pokrandt helps faculty and students with their computing and data analysis needs. He teaches an introductory Unix/Linux short course each fall.
“I look forward to the opportunity to serve the broader geosciences community as a member of the Unidata Users Committee,” says Mr. Pokrandt. “I hope to serve as a conduit to bring challenges and ideas from our faculty and students to Unidata, and conversely to bring cutting edge technology back to our research and educational endeavors.”
Kevin Tyle, Strategic Advisory Committee
Kevin Tyle is a Senior Programmer/Analyst in the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences (DAES) at the University at Albany (UAlbany). He received his M.S. in Atmospheric Science from DAES-UAlbany in 1995. He spent several years working for NCEP and later for MESO, Inc. developing software for visualization and analysis of geoscience data before returning to his alma mater in 2001. Among his other duties at UAlbany, he co-teaches a course each spring intended for atmospheric science majors, “Meteorological Data Analysis and Visualization,” in which students use programs such as the IDV and GEMPAK to analyze and display weather data in a variety of formats, including NetCDF.
Tyle's association with Unidata really caught fire following his attendance at an IDV regional training workshop in 2008 at Plymouth State University. He joined the Users Committee in 2009 and co-chaired the 2012 Unidata Triennial Users Workshop, “Navigating Earth System Science Data.” From 2012 to 2015, he served as Chair of the Users Committee, and played a key role in organizing the 2015 Unidata Triennial Users Workshop, “Data-Driven Geoscience: Applications, Opportunities, Trends and Challenges.”
“I look forward to continuing to contribute to Unidata's success as a member of the Strategic Advisory Committee,” says Tyle. “Unidata has been an essential part of my career trajectory, from my weather-weenie days to my current passion for data science. I look forward to continuing to assist Unidata in their absolutely crucial role in the geoscience academic and research community.”
Users Committee Student Representative
Graduate student representatives bring a valuable student perspective to Unidata committee discussions, and help Unidata meet emerging challenges with an eye toward supporting young scientists entering the field.
Warren Pettee, Users Committee
Warren Pettee is beginning a two-year term as the Users Committee's Graduate Student Representative. He is pursuing a Master's degree in Earth Sciences at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.
As an undergraduate meteorologist research assistant at UNC Charlotte, Warren was actively involved in integrating Unidata technologies into the campus weather portal, and was instrumental in getting the campus weather lab ready to run AWIPS II. He attended the 2015 Unidata Users Workshop and has configured and run the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to generate local weather forecasts for the Charlotte area.
“I'm primarily interested in improving forecasts and forecasting techniques for high-impact weather phenomena,” says Pettee. “ I spend a significant portion of my day working with weather technology and I look forward to using my skills to contribute to the community.”
Returning Committee Members
Two sitting committee members have agreed to extend their terms:
Lynn McMurdie, Strategic Advisory Committee
Dr. Lynn McMurdie is a Senior Lecturer and Research Meteorologist in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. She teaches several courses in Synoptic Meteorology, Weather Analysis and Forecasting, and Dynamics, and received the Department Teaching Award in 1999, 2004, 2011 and 2015. Her current research interests include predictability of synoptic scale weather systems over oceanic and coastal regions, winter-time lightning in cold air outbreaks, orographic precipitation and remote sensing of water vapor and liquid and frozen precipitation. She is currently the Project Manager for the OLYMPEX field project, that will occur fall 2015/winter 2016, which will focus on verification and validation of the Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) satellite in winter-time synoptic systems in regions of complex terrain.
Dr. McMurdie has served on the Unidata Strategic Advisory Committee since 2012.
Russ Schumacher, Users Committee
Dr. Russ Schumacher begins a three-year term as chair of the Users Committee. Dr. Schumacher is assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, where he has been since 2011. Prior to that, he held the same position at Texas A&M University. At both universities, he has been a regular user of Unidata software and data in research and teaching, including GEMPAK, LDM, and IDV. His research interests are primarily in mesoscale meteorology, including mesoscale convective systems, heavy precipitation, and numerical prediction, and he teaches courses in synoptic and mesoscale meteorology. As chair of the Users Committee, he looks forward to working with Unidata staff and university colleagues so that they can make the most out of Unidata's products and services in their research and education activities.
Dr. Schumacher has served on the Unidata Users Committee since 2012.
