CIRA - Key Persons
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- Wildlife Research Biologist ( Research Associate III )
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- Principal Investigator
- Research Scientist III
Principal Investigator: Alan Brammer, CSU/CIRA Co-Is: Dustin Grogan (University at Albany) and Andrea Schumacher (CSU/CIRA) Collaborator: Jason Dunion (University of Miami/CIMAS - NOAA/HRD), John Knaff (NOAA/STAR), Chris Slocum (NOAA/STAR) Funding: NOAA-NWS-NWSPO-2020-2006290; www.weather.gov/sti/cyclone Overview: This project seeks to develop a combined statistical-dynamical ensemble-based TC genesis probability forecast model, addressing HFIP priority 1 by developing techniques for TC forecast guidance, as … Continue reading Ensemble Global TC Genesis Index
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- Director, Earth System Research Laboratory Deputy Assistant Administrator, NOAA Research Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes, Boulder, Colorado
Amy Burzynski joined the Data Processing Center (DPC) at CIRA Fort Collins in March 2021 as CloudSat Data Processing Algorithm Integration Lead. She joined the INCUS project in June 2022 as the INCUS Science Data Processing Center Co-Lead and Algorithm Integration Lead.
Amy works with local and remote data product algorithm developers, coordinating and facilitating the implementation of their software applications at the DPC to generate official data products for NASA's CloudSat and INCUS missions.
Prior to joining CIRA, Amy was a Data Analyst and Development Team Lead at CSU's Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands (CEMML) Wildland Fire Program. Between college and graduate school, she worked for the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (ERDC-CRREL) EPOLAR Program.
Amy received a B.A. with Honors in Environmental Earth Sciences from Dartmouth College and M.A. in Earth Sciences (Geology) from the University of Northern Colorado. She holds active Project Management Professional (PMP) and Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certifications.
Professional interests include:
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- Research Scientist / Scholar
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- Database and Web Developer
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- Website Developer / Designer
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- Project Manager
- Research Associate
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- Senior Research Project Manager
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- Employee
- Research Physical Scientist
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- Satellite Application Support Specialist
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- AP Hourly Senior Research Associate
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- Senior Research Scientist / Scholar
Cynthia Combs received a BS in Earth Science/Meteorology concentration from Central Michigan University (1985) and a MS in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University (1987). She worked at STC-Metsat in Fort Collins, CO from 1988 to 1994 as a scientific programmer processing satellite and ground data on a variety of projects, including the CHANCES satellite cloud climatology, battlefield meteorology, cloud and smoke detection over the 1988 Yellowstone fires, and the NVAP water vapor database. She started at CIRA in 1992 as a research associate, and has worked a variety of projects since. She helped develop techiques to detect cloud liquid water over land using microwave satellite data from SSMI. Later work with microwave data includes identifying and examing RFI in Windsat data over US and analyzing soil moisture measurements from different ground instruments for use in satellite calibration. She has also continued her work with satellite cloud climatologies. An ongoing project now has over ten years of GOES satellite data quality-controled and archived over the continental US, and has completed and currently working on smaller projects focused on local forecasting conditions for National Weather Service offices in Wakefield, VA, Cheyenne, WY, Monterey, CA, and Eureka, CA. She has also done small programming and data processing jobs for several research scientists and have aided Master level students on their research projects, including cloud icing and soil moisture measurement from Windsat. Currently, she is aiding Steve Miller in his NPOESS low light sensor work and working with NASA to grid up Cloudsat data for Giovanni system.
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- Research Scientist / Scholar II
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- Satellite Analyst and Communicator
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- Research Associate
- Research Associate III
Dan Bikos received his BS in Meteorology at the State University of New York College at Brockport (1995), and MS in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma (1998). His areas of interest include severe weather, lake-effect snow and applications of satellite imagery to weather forecasting, particularly on the mesoscale. Dan has been a research associate at CIRA since 1998 working for the Virtual Institute for Satellite Integration Training (VISIT) project in which he develops training for NWS forecasters. Distance learning software (VISITview) combined with a conference call are utilized to deliver the training to NWS forecast offices. Dan has instructed more than 300 hours of live tele-training sessions, primarily dealing with operational applications of satellite imagery.
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- Senior Research Associate
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- Associate Director, Research Associate IV
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- Senior Research Associate
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- User Experience Researcher and Designer
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- Senior Research Scientist / Scholar
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- Retired Senior Research Scientist, CIRA, Colorado State University
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- Senior Research Scientist / Scholar
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- Senior Research Associate
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- Research Scientist / Scholar
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- Senior Research Scientist, CIRA, Colorado State University
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- Atmos Physics Dev & Implementation Scientist
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- Research Scientist / Scholar III
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- Economist, Research Associate IV
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- Senior Research Scientist
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- Employee
- Physical Scientist NOAA Center for Satellite Applications and Research Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch Fort Collins, CO
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- Tropical Cyclone Group Lead - Research Scientist / Scholar
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- Assistant Director of Outreach & Communications
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- Research Physical Scientist
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- Senior Research Scientist, CIRA, Colorado State University
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- Senior Research Computer Scientist
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- AP Hourly Senior Research Associate
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- Research Scientist
- Global Cloud Retrieval Scientist ( Research Scientist I )
My name is Randy Chase, a Research Scientist working at CSU/CIRA. I grew up in Buffalo, New York where lake effect snow likely inspired my love of the weather. For my undergraduate degree I attended SUNY Brockport and had my first research experience at an REU hosted by Penn State where I worked with Dr. Jose Fuentes on ozone transport caused by convection in the Amazon Rainforest. After undergrad, I went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where I got my M.S. and Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences working with Dr. Stephen Nesbitt and Dr. Greg McFarquhar. My graduate research focused on radar remote sensing of snow, where I investigated why the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission's snowfall retrievals were deficient, provided an alternative retrieval method and evaluated the new retrieval against CloudSat. After my Ph.D. I did a two year postdoc with Dr. Amy McGovern at the University of Oklahoma as part of the NSF AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography (AI2ES). During my postdoc I was first tasked to write two plain language machine learning tutorials for meteorologists. Beyond the tutorials, I also investigated if machine learning could help us retrieve storm updrafts from ground based radar data alone. My role at CSU/CIRA, is to assist in two major projects: INvestigation of Convective UpdraftS (INCUS) and Satellite-based 3D global cloud field analysis (OVERCAST). I will leverage my expertise in radar remote sensing and machine learning to assist the projects in their respective goals.
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- Acting Deputy Director, Senior Research Associate
Renate Brummer received the equivalent of a MS in Mathematics and Physics from the Universität München, Munich, Germany in 1981 and a PhD in Meteorology and Physical Oceanography from the University of Miami, Florida in 1986. Her areas of interest include mesoscale forecast modeling, satellite meteorology, and environmental education/outreach. She has been a CIRA employee since 1995 and has been working as project manager for different CIRA projects. During those years she managed the systems development team for the international school program GLOBE. The GLOBE Program is a worldwide community of students, teachers, scientists, and citizens working together to better understand, sustain, and improve Earth's environment at local, regional, and global scales. She also managed the so-called FX-Net project, a meteorological forecaster workstation which provides the user interface and functionality of the AWIPS workstation (used by NWS forecasters) via the internet. During the last two years, Renate worked as a project coordinator for CIRA's Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch (RAMMB).
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- Data Assimilation and Machine Learning Scientist
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- Senior Research Scientist, CIRA, Colorado State University
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- Senior Research Scientist / Scholar
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- Research Associate IV - Numerical Weather Prediction Researcher
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- Research Scientist / Scholar
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- Senior Research Scientist, CIRA, Colorado State University
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- Department Research Administrator
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- Satellite Application Support Specialist ( RA1 )
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- Research Scientist / Scholar II
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- NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Chemical Sciences Division, Boulder, Colorado
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- Research Scientist / Scholar II
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- Assistant to the Director
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- Machine Learning Lead ( CIRA ) / Research Professor ( ECE )
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- Data Visualization Researcher
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- Employee
- Research Scientist I
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- Aviation Weather Testbed Meteorologist / Developer
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- Research Scientist
- Research Scientist I
Jason Apke is a Research Scientist I at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere. He received his Bachelor of Sciences degree in Meteorology from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, CO in 2011, a Master's degree in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2013, and a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Alabama-Huntsville in 2018. His dissertation focused on using atmospheric motion vectors to depict flow fields over deep convection observed from super-rapid scan geostationary satellite imagery, and how they could be used to identify signals relevant to severe weather forecasting. He currently works on developing and implementing dense-optical flow derivation algorithms for a variety of satellite meteorology-related applications.
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- Senior Research Associate
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- Professor, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Colorado State University
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- Professor and Department Head, Atmospheric Science Department, Colorado State University
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- Acting Director, NOAA ESRL GSD
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- Professional / Individual Contributor II
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- Aviation Weather Testbed Meteorologist / Developer
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- Asst. to CIRA Facilities Manager
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- Senior Research Associate
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- Senior Research Associate
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- Research Associate II. JPSS Satellite Liaison
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- Chief, Aviation Support Branch, NOAA AWC
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- Meteorological Software Developer
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- Programmer / Research Associate IV
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- Chief, NWS Forecast Decision Training Division
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- Research Associate II Satellite Imagery Production and Communications
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- Research and Financial Project Manager
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- Senior Research Associate
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- Senior Programmer / Analyst & MADIS Tech Lead
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- Research Scientist / Scholar II
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- Research Scientist / Scholar II
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- Scientific Analyst, Research Associate
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- Research Scientist / Scholar
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- Research Associate III - Software Engineer
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- Front Office Clerical Assistant
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- Fellow
- Senior Research Scientist
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- Administrative and Research Support Coordinator
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- Director, Environmental Modeling Center, NOAA / NCEP
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- Meteorological Verification Developer / Analyst
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- IT Manager, Research Associate IV
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- Meteorological Data Systems Programmer / Analyst ( Research Associate II )
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- Senior Research Associate
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- Senior Scientist, NOAA 's Climate Monitoring and Diagnsotics Laboratory
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- Lead, Hydrometeorology Modeling and Applications Team NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory
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- Meteorological Software Developer
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- Senior Research Associate
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- Fellow
- Research Meteorologist, NOAA / National Severe Storms Laboratory ( NSSL )
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- Customer Support / Administrative Specialist
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- Emeritus Professor, Atmospheric Science Department, Colorado State University
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- Chief, Cooperative Research Programs NOAA / NESDIS StAR
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- Associate Professor, Atmospheric Science Department, Colorado State University
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- Director, IT Services Division, NOAA NCEI
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- Student Economics Research Assistant
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- Professor, Atmospheric Science Department, Colorado State University
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- Research Software Engineer II / Research Associate II
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- Director, Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies
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- Professor, Atmospheric Science Department, Colorado State University
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- Fellow
- Professor, Colorado State University
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- Research Scientist / Scholar I - Snow - Ecosystem Modeler
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- Forecast Operations Specialist
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- Senior Program Manager / Business Developer at NCAR / RAL
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- Research Associate II - HPC Software Developer
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- University Distinguished Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, Colorado State University
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- Social and Behavioral Science Program Analyst
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- Professor Emeritus, Atmospheric Science Department, Colorado State University
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- Research Scientist / Scholar II
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- Senior Research Scientist / Scholar
Zayd graduated from Concordia College Moorhead in 2022 with a BA in Computer Science with a concentration in computing. Before that, he interned as a web developer for a company called Transcendent Technologies who creates custom parcel management software. Now, he is a Full Stack Web Developer for CIRA, working on the TC Realtime and SLIDER sites.