Curriculum Vitae

Personal Statement

My main research interests involve using weather radar to observe phenomena that could lead to the improvement of tropical cyclone intensity forecasting. After the completion of my formal education, I wish to work in operational meteorology.

Education

(In progress) B.S. in Meteorology with Minor in Mathematics, University of Oklahoma, 2012

• Expected graduation date: May 2012
• (click here for completed coursework)

Research

In the summer of 2011, I worked as a NOAA Hollings Scholar intern at the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Charleston, South Carolina. My research project, entitled Multi-Dimensional Radar Analysis of Summertime Pulse Thunderstorms involved developing baselines for determining severe hail probabilities in summer pulse thunderstorms over southeastern South Carolina and coastal Georgia. This project involved examining the storm-top divergence using base velocity data, and the reflectivity at the -20C isothermal level. The research was presented in the forecast office as well as the NOAA Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland in August of 2011.

During my time at the NOAA Radar Operations Center in Norman, Oklahoma, I worked extensively with MATLAB to examine trends and problems with differential reflectivity for dual-polarimetric radar. One of my main focuses involved testing the quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) algorithms used with dual-polarimetric radars. One case study I worked on involved data from the Morehead City, North Carolina radar collected during Hurricane Irene.

For my senior capstone project, I will be examining tornadic circulations within Hurricane Irene using data obtained by the University of Oklahoma's Rapid X-Band Polarimetric Doppler Radar (RaXPol). My mentor for this project is School of Meteorology professor Dr. Michael Biggerstaff.

For more information on some of my research projects, visit my research page.

Work Experience

• June 2010 - Present: Student Intern at the NOAA Radar Operations Center in Norman, Oklahoma. My main duties involved writing scripts in MATLAB (as well as a few in Python) to troubleshoot issues with differential reflectivity data from the dual-polarimetric radar beta tests, most notably the Norman, Morehead City, Wichita, and Vance Air Force Base radars. Much of my work involved examining the output from dual-polarimetric QPE algorithms.
• May 2011 - August 2011: NOAA Hollings Scholar Intern at the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Charleston, South Carolina. In addition to working on a research project (discussed above), I also took on some operational duties that involved collecting observational data (land and marine), creating daily climate summaries, and preparing, launching, and monitoring the evening radiosonde launch. During severe weather events, I primarily made and received phone calls concerning severe weather damage reports and issued local storm reports.

Technical Skills

I have worked some with C, Java, JavaScript, and Python programming languages. I have worked a lot with MATLAB scripting while at the Radar Operations Center. I have mastered basics of HTML and know some about advanced HTML topics.

Teaching

During my time at the University of Oklahoma, I have been an active member of a student forecasting organization called Oklahoma Weather Lab (OWL). For my junior and senior years, I have been a forecasting shift leader which heavily involved teaching new members forecasting skills. Some of these skills include looking at surface and upper-air charts, satellite data, and model forecasts.