American Geophysical Union (AGU) Town Hall & American Meteorological Society (AMS) Agency Update

Thomas Hauser is the director of the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research. In this role, he is responsible for the state-of-the-art supercomputing, data, analysis, and visualization services supporting the Earth system science community. He also oversees the research and development activities in emerging technologies, software engineering, computational science, machine learning, and data assimilation to sustain progress in Earth system science. Before joining CISL, Hauser was the director of Research Computing at the University of Colorado Boulder, one of the two founding executive directors of the Center for Research Data and Digital Scholarship, and a CU Boulder Libraries faculty member. He earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, specializing in computational fluid dynamics, from the University of Technology in Munich, Germany.

John Clyne is the Acting Director of CISL’s Technology Development Division (TDD) and the manager of its Visualization and Analysis Systems Technologies (VAST) section. TDD’s research and development efforts, in support of the NCAR science mission, span the creation of open-source community software tools, modernizing and improving the scalability and performance of earth system numerical models, exploring emerging technologies, and conducting applied research to advance computational science. John’s career at NCAR began in 1987 while completing his M.S. in Computer Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. John’s long career at NCAR is driven by his passion for applying his broad technical expertise to the betterment of life on earth.

Visualization and Analysis Systems Technologies (VAST) Website

Doug Schuster is the acting director of CISL’s Information Systems
Division (ISD) and manager of ISD’s Data Engineering and Curation
Section. ISD develops and maintains services that enable search and
discovery of NCAR’s data assets, support data-proximate computational
research, and provide long-term preservation and access to the rich
variety of observational data sets and model outputs produced and
hosted at NCAR. Additionally, ISD offers consulting services to its
data services users and assists NCAR researchers in developing data
management plans that meet community open science expectations. Doug
earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering at the University of
Minnesota, Twins Cities, and an M.S. in atmospheric science at
Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

NSF NCAR Research Data Archive

NSF NCAR Data Search

NSF NCAR Digital Asset Services Hub 

Ben attended the University of Texas at Austin, earning his BS and PhD in Aerospace Engineering, with a MS in Computational & Applied Mathematics.  He worked at NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center for 18 years prior to joining NCAR.  His background includes constructing and using HPC systems (compute and storage), particularly for fluid dynamics simulations

Dr. David John Gagne II is a Machine Learning Scientist II and head of the Machine Integration and Learning for Earth Systems (MILES) group at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. He has led the development of machine learning systems that enhance understanding and prediction of high impact weather and critical Earth system processes. He received his Ph.D. in meteorology from the University of Oklahoma in 2016 and completed an NCAR ASP Postdoctoral Fellowship before assuming his current role. He is a NSF AI2ES AI Institute leader and a NSF LEAP Science and Technology Center member. He is a WMO Nowcasting and Mesoscale Research Working Group member, chaired the American Meteorological Society Artificial Intelligence Committee, and serves as an editor for the AI for the Earth Systems journal, and has led summer schools, short courses, and hackathons.

Machine Integration and Learning for Earth Systems (MILES) Website

Brett Raczka is an Associate Data Scientist II within the Data Assimilation Research Section of NCAR's Computational and Information Systems Lab.  His work focuses on the use of land data assimilation to help improve earth system model forecasts for carbon cycling, drought monitoring and atmospheric seasonal forecasting.  He also supports the assimilation of conventional and radiance satellite observations for improved atmospheric forecasting using the Weather Research and Forecasting model.  He received his Bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame and a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from The Pennsylvania State University.

Data Assimilation Research Testbed Website

Charlie Becker is an Associate Data Scientist II with the Machine Integration and Learning for Earth Systems (MILES) group at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. He joined the MILES team in 2020 and has been an adjunct instructor for meteorological computer programming at Metropolitan State University of Denver since 2023. His work at NSF NCAR focuses on enhanced prediction, understanding, and uncertainty quantification of earth systems with a variety of machine learning methods.

Machine Integration and Learning for Earth Systems (MILES) Website

Dr. Nihanth Cherukuru is a Project Scientist in CISL working at the intersection of data visualizations, accessibility and user experience research. As an interdisciplinary applied researcher, his work focuses on the application of emerging technologies in the design of data visualizations to effectively communicate scientific findings to domain experts, policymakers, and the general public. He leads the Visualization Services and Research group (ViSR) at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) whose mission is to empower users of geoscience data to create user-centric data visualizations through visualization support and the development of VAPOR- a 3D data visualization application for geosciences.

Keywords: Data visualization support, Web-interactives, 3D visualizations, VAPOR, science communication, User experience research.

Visualization and Analysis Systems Technologies (VAST) Website

Dr. Negin Sobhani is an HPC consultant at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF-NCAR).  Her focus is on adopting emerging computational technologies to improve the performance and usability of earth system models and data analysis workflows.  She has extensive experience in HPC, Earth System Modeling, AI/ML, big data analysis, and interactive visualization, which enables her to assist users from diverse backgrounds in leveraging these technologies to advance their scientific endeavors.

Negin earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Iowa in 2017, where she focused on developing and optimizing regional weather and air quality models.  She began her full-time journey at NCAR as an Advanced Study Program (ASP) postdoctoral researcher and then worked in the Climate and Global Dynamics (CGD) division before her current role in the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL).

Throughout her tenure at NCAR, Negin has led various tutorials and has been a strong advocate for user needs. She is actively involved in organizing short courses, tutorials, workshops, and other training events, mentoring graduate students and postdocs, and serving on multiple committees. Negin has been a strong advocate for open science and reproducibility in geosciences and has been actively engaged in convergent science efforts, promoting interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle complex challenges in weather and climate research.