ISETCSC PI Capability Statements

CENTER Director: Solomon Bililign
Center Deputy Director: Keith Schimmel
Center Distinguished Scientist: Yuh-Lang-Lin

THRUST AREA I- SENSOR SCIENCE AND SENSOR TECHNOLOGY FOR REMOTE SENSING, CHEMICAL SENSORS, COASTAL WATER SENSING, ATMOSPHERIC SENSING

THRUST AREA CO-LEADS: AHMED AND ASSEFA

	Dr. Samir Ahmed (CUNY) is a Herbert Kayser Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering, and Director of the Optical Remote Sensing Laboratory at the City College of New York and one of the PIs in the current NOAA-ISETCSC. Educated at Cambridge University and University College, London, he has over 40 years of industrial and academic experience and was responsible for many important innovations in the field of optics and lasers. These included the first use of high resolution laser spectroscopy, graphite bore magnetically confined argon lasers, differential absorption lidars for the remote sensing of molecular air pollution, energy transfer organic dye lasers, and more recently in numerous techniques for retrievals of bio-optical properties of complex waters, including the invention of a polarization discrimination technique for the retrieval of natural fluorescence in sea water. He has well over a hundred and publications, including over a dozen a dozen in the area of sensors and sensing of bio-optical properties of sea-water, with the research receiving support from NOAA, ONR, NASA, NSF and EPA. He has mentored over 25 PhD students. E-mail: ahmed@ccny.cuny.edu
	Dr. Mark Arend (CUNY) is a Senior Research Scientist with the Optical Remote Sensing Lab at the City College of New York. He has extensive research and development experience in advanced instrumentation and the environmental measurements. His has a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Columbia University and a B.S. in Physics from University of Washington. He has worked in industry at Tycom Laboratories (Formally Bell Labs) and in Government Research at the Naval Research Lab. His background is in studying novel applications relating to the interaction of radiation with matter. He has applied this in areas such as long haul fiber optic communications and optical amplifiers and over the last 10 years to the field of remote sensing of the atmosphere. While at CCNY he has led the development of the NYCMetNet, the related meteorological, sensors, lidars, and network systems, and spearheaded the incorporation of advanced meteorological modeling. E-mail: marend@ccny.cuny.edu
	Dr. Zerihun Assefa (NCAT) is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at North Carolina A&T State University and one of the PIs in the current NOAA ISETCSC. Assefa has accumulated vast experience in syntheses, X-ray crystallography, and spectroscopic work on luminescent complexes. Assefa has published over sixty peer-reviewed research articles and two book chapters with hundreds of presentations in various scientific conferences. Assefa is a regularly reviewer ACS and Royal Society journals and is an Editorial Board Member for Open Crystallography Journal as well as Associate editor of the Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia. Research interest in Assefa’s lab involves development of luminescent materials for various VOC detections. Current capability includes X-ray crystallography, hollow material synthesis for VOC studies, white light emitting materials, DFT theoretical calculations, luminescent studies, quantum yield, time dependent, and lifetime studies (picoseconds and longer time range) at cryogenic temperatures. E-mail: zassefa@ncat.edu
	Dr. Solomon Bililign (NCAT) is a professor of physics at North Carolina A&T State University and is the current Director for NOAA-ISETCSC. He has been active in research and education since joining North Carolina A&T State University in 1993. His area of specialization includes experimental and theoretical atomic, molecular and optical physics and chemical physics. He has conducted collaborative research at various national laboratories and has been a PI and a Co-PI in over 30 NSF proposals. He has received over $15 million in grants, including the NSF-CAREER award, NSF-MRI, and NSF-PIRE. He has developed both national and international collaborations in geosciences and most recently Bililign lead a team of thirty-one scientists and engineers in eight institutions to win a $12.5 million award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to establish the NOAA-ISET Center, where he now serves as Director. In 2001-2003 he was named “Outstanding Senior Researcher” for NCAT. Bililign has authored 3 book chapters and over 30 refereed publications and made over 50 presentations. Bililign’s current research in atmospheric chemistry focuses on overtone cavity ring down spectroscopy and negative ion proton transfer mass spectrometry. This work has broad impacts in two areas: air quality and climate. Climate systems are highly variable, changing in hours, days or years. His focus is on understanding the chemistry of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), key ingredients in the formation of ozone and aerosols, and how they play a significant role in determining regional air quality, and possibly the global carbon cycle. E-mail: Bililign@ncat.edu
	Dr. Barry Gross (CUNY) is an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at the City College of New York and one of the PIs in the current NOAA ISETCSC. He is the coauthor of more than 50+ journal publications and 40+ presentations in the field of nonlinear optics, ultra-fast pulse propagation and multispectral inversion of passive and active remote sensing instruments. These including lidars, satellite multiwave length radiometers and hyperspectral sensors for the detection and quantification of trace gases, aerosols and coastal water properties. He currently mentors five PhD students on a variety of research topics and has mentored or co-mentored six PhD students. E-mail: gross@ccny.cuny.edu
	Dr. Marc N. Fiddler (NCAT) is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at North Carolina A&T State University in the NOAA-ISETCSC. He is an Analytical Chemist that specializes in mass spectrometry and associated techniques, and has been engaged in research since 1995. He is presently using ultrasensitive detection techniques, such as cavity ring-down spectroscopy and chemical ionization mass spectrometry, to measure and characterize atmospherically-relevant compounds and light-induced chemical processes. He received his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry in 2009 from Purdue University, where he used mass spectrometric techniques to analyze compounds found in petroleum, plastics, atmospheric particulate matter, and cloud water. E-mail: marc.fiddler@gmail.com
	Dr. Alam Hasson (FRESNO) is a Professor of Chemistry at California State University- Fresno and one of the PIs in the current NOAA ISETCSC. Alam is an atmospheric chemist with over fifteen years of experience. His work includes both laboratory and field measurements, and is centered on studies of the kinetics and mechanisms of the tropospheric degradation of organic pollutants using smog chambers and a suite of analytical techniques including FTIR, HPLC, GC/FID, GC/MS, and LC/MS . In recent years he has collaborated with Dr. James Burkholder (NOAA ESRL, CSD) and his group which has resulted in a co-authored journal article and conference presentation. Dr. Hasson has mentored 13 graduate students and 45 undergraduates over the last nine years. He has received $7.8M in research funding since 2006 ($2.7M as PI), has published 24 journal articles and has given over 70 presentations at national and regional meetings. E-mail: ahasson@csufresno.edu
	Dr. Shamsuddin Ilias (NCAT) is a Research Professor of Chemical and Bioengineering and has been at North Carolina A&T State University since 1990. Currently, Dr. Ilias is serving as Director of the chemical engineering program. Dr. Ilias’ current research includes: Pd and Pd-alloy composite membranes for high temperature gas separations, development of nano-structured filled polymers for advanced separation applications with computer-aided modeling and simulation; development of CO-tolerant electrocatalysts for PEM fuel cell electrode, computational fluid and particle dynamics, and aerosol mechanics. Dr. Ilias has been thesis advisor/co-advisor to 48 MS and PhD graduates and currently, advisor to one PhD and three MSChE students. He was the recipient of University Chancellor’s 2002 Outstanding Senior Faculty Research Award. In recognition of his scholarly work, the College of Engineering named and appointed Dr. Ilias as Research Professor in May 2005. In 2009, Dr. Ilias was elected as Fellow of the AIChE (American Institution of Chemical Engineers). To his credit, Dr. Ilias has over 40 refereed journal papers, over 200 presentations at the national and international conferences and proceeding papers, three patents. Dr. Ilias is a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) in the state of Ohio. E-mail: ilias@ncat.edu
	Dr. Jianzhong Lou (NCAT) is a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Bioengineering at North Carolina A&T State University. He has eight years of industrial R&D and ten years of academic teaching and research experience. He works with fellow faculty members both at NCAT and from other institutions on several large-scale broad based projects. His polymer biosensor research has been featured by Food Ingredient News. He uses both experimental approaches and simulation in his research. E-mail lou@ncat.edu

THRUST AREA II- GLOBAL OBSERVING SYSTEM-WEATHER AND CLIMATE MODELING, SOCIAL SCIENCE APPLICATIONS

THRUST CO-LEADS: SEMAZZI AND ZHANG

	Dr. ShooU-Yuh Chang (NCAT) is DOE Samuel Massie Chair Professor in Civil Engineering at North Carolina A & T State University. He has 29 years of experience in teaching and research in environmental engineering, environmental systems analysis and water quality modeling. He has extensive research experience in the use of models to generate alternatives for environmental management systems. Dr. Chang received the DOE Massie Chair of Excellence Program Award for Outstanding Research and Educational Accomplishments in 1999 and the Iraj Zandi Award from The Journal of Solid Waste Technology and Management in 2000. In the past 10 years, Dr. Chang worked on research grants and contracts from agencies such as US Department of Energy, Water Environment Research Foundation, and Air Force Office of Scientific Research. In these projects, the research is concentrated on: 1) applying data assimilation techniques such as Kalman Filter and Particle Filter to subsurface contaminant modeling; 2) integrating modeling and optimization techniques to identify contamination source and history in a subsurface system; 3) evaluating regional noise effect on the accuracy of subsurface contaminant transport model with KF; and 4) applying Monte Carlo simulation to water quality models for uncertainty and risk assessment. Dr. Chang has mentored 2 post doctoral research associates, 5 doctoral students, 40+ masters students, and about 20+ undergraduate students. In the past 10 years, he has received about $3,000 K in research funding, has published 15 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and has given 20 presentations at national and regional meetings. E-mail: chang@ncat.edu
	Dr. Lauren Davis (NCAT) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina A&T State University. Her primary research is largely focused on analyzing the impact of emerging trends (increased availability of information, disruptions caused by supply shortages, and natural or man-made disasters) on optimal stocking decisions within a supply chain. The modeling approaches for these problems have largely been stochastic, with particular emphasis on the use of Markov Decision Processes to represent the system under study. She is currently the principal investigator for one grant at NSF and two grants with the Department of Homeland Security, one of which evaluates emergency preparedness activities at Ports. Professor Davis has advised 15 graduate students (10 graduated with M.S. degree, 3 ongoing MS students and 2 ongoing Doctoral candidates). She has received approximately $800,000 in funding in the past 5 years and has published 12 peer-reviewed conference proceedings and 4 articles in peer reviewed journals (3 related to mathematical models for quantifying information value in supply chains). E-mail: lbdavis@ncat.edu
	Dr. Lyubov Kurkalova (NCAT) is an Associate Professor of Economics at North Carolina A&T State University. Her research interests include economic models of decision-making under uncertainty, carbon sequestration, greenhouse gas mitigation polices in agriculture, cropland use changes due to the expansion of ethanol production and the ensuing changes in agricultural non-point source pollution. Dr. Kurkalova has received over $3 million in funding from USDA, USDOE, and NSF in the past 5 years. Her research has been published in a variety of economics and interdisciplinary journals including Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Economics Letters, and Climatic Change. E-mail: lakurkal@ncat.edu
	Dr. Yaw Kyei (NCAT) is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at North Carolina A&T State University and one of the PIs in the current NOAA-ISETCSC. He has five years of experience in studying numerical weather and climate prediction modeling. His research interests include higher-order Numerical methods for solving partial differential equations and investigations of air-sea studies to understand the modeling of SST distributions (local/nonlocal forcing) for improved accuracies of simulated Tropical Storm intensifications. Since his appointment at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, he has continued with investigations of accuracy improvements of numerical methods for solving time-dependent systems through compatible space-time discretizations of such systems. E-mail: ykyei@ncat.edu
	Dr. Yuh-Lang Lin(NCAT)Dr. Yuh-Lang Lin is the distinguished scientist of the NOAA ISET Center, which is led by NC A&T, and a professor of the Department of Physics and the Department of Energy & Environmental Systems of NC A&T. Dr. Lin is an atmospheric dynamicist and modeler. In the past 30 years or so, he has heavily involved in theoretical studies and numerical modeling simulations of a wide range of atmospheric phenomena. His research involves: Tropical Cyclone Dynamics, Mountain Meteorology, Cloud Microphysics and Dynamics, Climate dynamics, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Storm Dynamics, Moist Convection, Gravity Waves, Forest Fire Dynamics, Mars Atmosphere. He has been coordinating research among about 30 PIs in three thrust areas of the NOAA ISET Center, taking lead in forming a numerical modeling group within the ISET Thrust Area II, serving as committee members and session chairs in international and national conferences, serving as editors in scientific journals, and serving as PIs for more than 30 research grants for several funding agencies. These lead him to publish more than 90 research papers in leading journals and an advanced graduate textbook entitled "Mesoscale Dynamics" (Cambridge, 2007). E-mail: ylin@ncat.edu
	Dr. Liping Liu (NCAT) is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at North Carolina A&T State University. She is an applied mathematician with emphasis in the dynamic phenomena and numerical methods for dynamical systems. After her PhD in 2002, three years post doc at NRC-Canada and Duke University, and two years assistant professorship at University of Texas Pan American, Dr. Liu joined A&T in 2007. The project for her PhD program at University of Alberta, Canada, was supported by Institute for Aerospace Research, NRC of Canada. Dr. Liu has investigated bifurcation phenomena of fluid-structural coupled systems in aerospace using various modern mathematical analysis techniques including center manifolds, normal forms and point transformation methods. As a post doc, Dr. Liu did a series studies on the improvement and extension of the harmonic balance method. The investigated model equations include the forced Duffing oscillation, the unforced and forced Van der Pol equation and a system of coupled Duffing equations that represent the structural motion of a wing coupled to an aerodynamic flow. Since her appointment at A&T, she gradually shifted her research emphasis to numerical weather prediction within the NOAA-ISET CSC. Dr. Liu has been invited to present seminar talks at several universities in US, Canada and China. Dr. Liu has consistently made presentations at international conferences in mathematics and in engineering. She is a regular reviewer for couple of peer reviewed journals in mathematics and in engineering including Journal of Sound and Vibration, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, and Applied Mathematics and Computation. Dr. Liu has published over 23 refereed journal articles and 9 conference proceeding papers. E-mail- lliu@ncat.edu
	Dr. Helena Mitasova (NCSU) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at North Carolina State University. Her research at the University of Illinois, US Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories in Champaign and currently at NCSU has focused on methods for surface modeling, analysis and visualization with applications to sustainable land use management and coastal terrain dynamics based on lidar data. She co-authored the first book on open source GRASS GIS, now in its third edition, and she published more than 50 papers on methods and applications of GRASS GIS for topographic analysis, modeling of landscape processes, coastal dynamics, and visualization. She has developed graduate courses based on FOSS4G software, offered at the NCSU as core of the Geospatial Information Science and Technology program. Dr. Mitasova has received over $1.2 million funding in the past 10 years. She is an advisor for four MS and PhD students and she served on a committee for 25 MS and PhD students from four major universities. Her PhD is from the Slovak Technical University, Bratislava, Slovakia. E-mail: helena_mitasova@ncsu.edu
	Dr. Xiuli Qu (NCAT)is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina A&T (NC A&T) State University. She received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University in December 2006. She joined NC A&T as an assistant professor in Fall 2007. She has eight years of experience in developing optimization models for capacity planning and scheduling in complex systems such as reverse supply chain systems and healthcare delivery systems. In her previous work, she developed mathematical models and quantitative procedures for optimal decision making in open access scheduling, which is a new concept for outpatient appointment scheduling. In particular, she proposed a mean-variance model and developed an efficient recursive procedure to determine the optimal percentage of open appointments, and she also formulated a Stochastic Integer Programming (SIP) model to determine the optimal scheduling template, which is solved by a heuristic procedure combining tabu search, Monte Carlo simulation and statistical methods. These contributions led to an honorable mention award for best paper with the Health Application Division of INFORMS in 2006, a best paper award in the 2007 Annual Conference of Society of Health Systems, and an honorable mention award for best thesis with Decision Sciences Institute in 2007. Prof. Qu has advised 6 graduate students (3 graduated with M.S. degree, 1 ongoing Doctoral student, and 2 ongoing Master students). She has been a co-PI of two DHS projects receiving about $580,000 funding in the past 3 years. In 2009, she received Rookie of the Year Award for Demonstrating Outstanding Promise as a Researcher from NC A&T. She has published 15 articles in peer-reviewed journals (2 related to the prediction modeling of wind speed), and 20 conference papers. Her current research interests include wind modeling, emergence responses, healthcare system optimization, health informatics, and RFID applications. She is active with professional societies such as INFORMS, IIE, and SHS. E-mail: xqu@ncat.edu
	Dr. Yevgenii Rastigejev (NCAT) is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Mathematics and Energy & Environmental Systems, a PI in the NOAA-ISETCSC center and the director for HBCU-RISE AMCA center. His research has been in the areas of advanced multi-scale numerical analysis, applied mathematics and scientific computing with applications to modeling in the following fields: Atmospheric Chemical Transport, Atmospheric Dynamics, Computational and Theoretical Fluid Dynamics and Combustion. His current research includes three topics: the effect of ocean spray on tropical cyclone dynamics, multi-scale computational algorithms for global atmospheric chemical transport and combustion, and highly non-equilibrium hypersonic boundary layer. As a graduate student he developed the wavelet-based adaptive numerical algorithm for multi-scale computation in fluid dynamics. As a postdoctoral researcher he developed a spatial reduction multi-scale numerical algorithms for global atmospheric chemical transport and front-capturing numerical algorithms for thin flames simulations. Dr. Rastigejev has authored over 10 publications in peer-reviewed journals and has given over 10 presentations in national and international meetings. He has mentored one Ph.D. student and three undergraduate students. Recently Dr. Rastigejev has been awarded a nearly $1,000,000 NSF HBCU-RISE Center for Advanced Multi-scale Computational Algorithms (AMCA) grant. E-mail: yarastig@ncat.edu
	Dr. John Paul Roop (NCAT) is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at North Carolina A & T State University and one of the PIs in the current NOAA-ISETCSC. He is an expert in approximating the solution of partial differential equations using numerical methods. Since his appointment at North Carolina A & T State University, he has continued his research in numerical methods within the NOAA-ISET CSC. Professor Roop is currently mentoring 5 undergraduate students and 2 graduate students. He has published 13 refereed journal articles and 3 conference proceedings in the past 6 years, received $83,000 in NSF funding, and submitted $4 million as PI or co-PI in NSF proposals and has been involved in other submissions over the past 4 years. E-mail: jproop.ncat@gmail.com
	Dr. Fredrick Semazzi (NCSU) is a Professor of Meteorology at North Carolina State University and one of the PIs in the current NOAA-ISETCSC. He has over 25 years of experience in studying the climate of Africa and the surrounding oceanic regions. As a graduate student, he studied the dominant modes of climate variability that modulate the climate of Africa. He also worked on the development of the bounded derivative method as an alternative to the nonlinear normal mode method in constructing dynamically balanced data for model initialization in the tropics. As a postdoctoral researcher he developed the first GCM hydrostatic global model which was based on the semi-implicit semi-Lagrangian numerical method. Since his appointment at NCSU, he has continued to study similar problems and interacted with scientists at NOAA NCDC and IRI (primarily supported by NOAA), and other major research laboratories in the US and abroad. His research contributions include, (i) regional climate model climate change projections of the African and Eastern Europe climates, (ii) development of the first global nonhydrostatic dynamic core as a prototype for the ‘next generation global weather & climate models, and (iii) hurricane modeling. He has made important contributions in the development of methodology for the application of ensemble model prediction for climate services, which also has important applications in other geosciences, clinical epidemiology & neurophysiology, nuclear medicine, radiology, biomedical engineering, and psychology. Professor Semazzi has mentored 9 Doctoral students, 10 Masters students, and 14 undergraduate students. He has received about $21 Million in funding in the past 20 years, has published 37 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and has given 30 presentations at national and regional meetings. E-mail: fred_semazzi@ncsu.edu
	Dr. Guoqing Tang (NCAT) is a professor of mathematics, adjunct professor of physics, and interim chairman of the Mathematics Department at North Carolina A&T State University as well as one of the project PIs in the current NOAA-ISET CSC. Dr. Tang is an applied mathematician with expertise and experience in mathematical modeling, numerical simulation and geophysical/statistical data analysis. His current research focuses on mathematical and computational modeling of Hurricane generation, propagation and development over northern Africa and Atlantic as well as seismic wave propagation and imaging. His research is interdisciplinary, and he has collaborated with mathematicians, scientists and engineers in numerous projects on or off campus. As a PI/co-PI, he has secured over thirteen million dollars of research grants from the NSF, NASA, Sloan Foundation, US Department of Education, UNC GA, industries and other institutions since 1997. He has published 30 papers and one book, presented numerous invited or contributed talks, and participated in a number of short courses and workshops. He has supervised two post-doctoral research associates, advised eighteen graduate students’ theses or projects, and directed twenty-four undergraduate students' research over the past fifteen years.E-mail: Gtang@ncat.edu
	Dr. Lian Xie (NCSU) is a Professor in the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at NC State University and one of the PIs in the current NOAA-ISETCSC. He received his Ph.D. in Meteorology and Physical Oceanography from the University of Miami, Florida in 1992. He joined NCSU in 1992 as a visiting Assistant Professor and Coordinator for inter-institutional Ph.D. Program in Marine Sciences. He was promoted to tenure-track assistant professor in 1997, associate professor with tenure in 2001, and full professor in 2005. He has directed over twenty federal research projects with a total funding exceeding $15 million, and published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in professional journals, book chapters and conference proceedings. His accomplishments in storm surge and hurricane prediction have been widely reported by broadcasting and print media including New York Times, CNN, News & Observer, and China Xinhua News Agency. He was selected by Triangle Business Journal as one of the “10 area people working to change the world” in 2006. He served on the editorial boards of several professional journals, and chaired several international conferences and workshops relevant to this project. He received two awards (1998 and 2003) from the US National Weather Service for his contribution to improving storm surge forecasting. In 2008, his work was used to improve wind forecasting for the Beijing Olympics, and for which he was recognized by the China Weather Service for providing one of the best wind forecast guidance for the Olympic Sailing Competition. E-mail: lian_xie@ncsu.edu
	Dr. Jing Zhang (NCAT) is a Professor in Energy and Environmental Systems at North Carolina A&T State University and one of the current PIs for NOAA-ISETCSC. Her research interests include: Mesoscale Modeling and Application: conducting comprehensive mesoscale modeling studies for understanding various mesoscale atmosphere phenomena and extreme weathers, evaluating model performance through examining model physics and statistical analysis, and applying the mesoscale models for real-time weather forecast; Data Assimilation: developing data assimilation scheme with satellite retrievals for the mesoscale weather forecast model and applying the WRF-Var system to assimilate various in-situ measured and satellite retrieved surface and up-air observations for producing the state-of-the-art numerical simulations; Regional Climate Downscaling: performing downscaling simulations of the global climate model present-day simulations and future climate change projections under various scenarios with regional model, and analyzing climate change impacts at the regional scales; Model Development: enhancing model performance by improving model physics, such as the land surface processes, sea ice melting and growing processes, and the ocean treatment in the regional climate modeling; Land-Vegetation-Atmosphere Interaction Study: conducting research study on the climate impacts of land surface processes with both global and regional climate models; Arctic Climate Study: conducting climatology study of the Arctic cyclone activity and the atmospheric circulation pattern with various global reanalyses for better understanding the rapid climate changes in the Arctic. E-mail: jingnc@gmail.com

THRUST AREA III : INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: DATA MINING, FUSION AND DISTRIBUTED ARCHITECHTURE

THRUST CO-LEADS: HOMAIFAR AND TANG

	Dr. Cathy Connor (UAS) is a Professor of Geology at the University of Alaska Southeast. Dr. Connor’s research interests are in glacial geology and glacial landscapes as an archive for paleoclimate history. She is particularly interested in subfossils records in sediments (pollen, marine subfossils/microfauna, and macro-plant material). In Juneau she has interacted with glaciologist Dr. Roman Motyka of the University Alaska Geophysical Institute, UAS anthropologist Dr. Daniel Monteith, and Glacier Bay National Park scientists to characterize Little Ice Age records of glacial events that are also described in the ethnohistory of the local HUNA Tlingit people. She has mentored dozens of undergraduates in geoscience research and has also worked extensively with Alaska high school teachers and their students in field science. Her research has been funded by the NSF, NASA, and the NPS. Dr. Connor is affiliated with the University Alaska Fairbanks Department of Geology and Geophysics and collaborates with the Alaska Quaternary Center through annual Friends of the Pleistocene fieldtrips throughout Alaska. She will guide UAS undergraduate students in monitoring local glacier dynamics and lake-glacier interactions. E-mail: concathy@gmail.com
	Dr. Albert Esterline (NCAT) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina A&T State University and one of the current PIs at NOAA-ISETCSC. After receiving a PhD in philosophy, Dr. Esterline received a PhD in computer science and (at the same time) an MS in mathematics. His principal research area for the past fifteen years has been multiagent systems, but formal methods and ontologies have also received attention. Dr Esterline began teaching Web-related classes ten years ago, which led to a research interest in Web services and then to Web science. In part because of involvement with NOAA-ISET, his interests have included in the past two years data fusion and wireless sensor networks. During the past five years, Dr. Esterline has been a member of the NOAA-ISET Center at A&T and has interacted with scientists at NOAA ESRL and at NOAA NCDC. Dr. Esterline has mentored five PhD students (four as co-advisor), 71 MS students, and about 40 undergraduate students. In the past ten years, he has received $810,000 in funding as PI (almost $10,000,000 as co-PI), has published 71 papers in refereed journals and proceedings as well as book chapters, and given 26 presentations at national and regional meetings. E-mail: esterlin@ncat.edu
	Dr. Michael Grossberg (CUNY) is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at City College, City University of New York and one of the PIs in the current NOAA-ISETCSC. He spent four years as a Research Scientist with the Columbia Automated Vision Environment (CAVE), at Columbia University. He received his PhD in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991. His research in computer vision has included topics in the geometric and photometric modeling of cameras, and analyzing features for indexing. He has also developed algorithms for medical imaging segmentation, satellite image compression, and is developing a collaborative science system for experiments on high performance computing facilities. Dr. Grossberg was a Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at Columbia University. He was also a Ritt Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Columbia University. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Max Plank Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has authored and coauthored papers that have appeared in ICCV, ECCV, CVPR. He has filed several U.S. and international patents for inventions related to computer vision, as well as for multi-spectral image compression. E-mail: michaeldg@gmail.com
	Dr. Matthew Heavner (UAS) is a Research Scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University Alaska Southeast. Dr. Heavner’s interest in meteorology and remote sensing led him to implement the weather stations during Phase 1 of NOAA-ISETCSC project. He is currently primarily involved with research opportunities at Los Alamos National Laboratory, but maintains affiliate status with the University of Alaska. Dr. Heavner will collaborate with data acquisition, network operations, and data dissemination. E-mail: heavner@lanl.gov
	Michael Hekkers (UAS) is an Adjunct Professor and Environmental Science Lab Manager at the University of Alaska Southeast. Mr. Hekkers has completed his Master Degree (2010) under Dr. Andrew Fountain, in Glaciology at Portland State University in Oregon. His thesis involved the visualization of glacier change on Mount Rainier, Washington. He currently teaches courses in the UAS Environmental Science and Geography programs and mentors undergraduates in glacier studies. The annual mass balance data he collects on Mendenhall Glacier is used by the US Forest Service to inform over 450,000 summer visitors each year. His GIS skills are valued by faculty and students. Mr. Hekkers will continue to guide our glacier monitoring program on the Mendenhall glacier in cooperation with the USFS. E-mail: mlhekkers@uas.alaska.edu
	Dr. Abdollah Homaifar (NCAT) received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1979 and 1980, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Alabama in 1987, all in electrical engineering. He is currently the Duke Energy Eminent professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina A&T State University (NCA&TSU). He is also the director of the Autonomous Control and Information Technology center at NCA&TSU, and Thrust Area Leader for Data Fusion, data mining and Distributed Architecture, NOAA ISET Center, at NCA&TSU. His current work includes the design and automation of hybrid control for unmanned aerial vehicles, robotics, and applications of digital control in converters. His research interests include machine learning, optimization, adaptive control, optimal control, signal processing, and soft computing and modeling. In particular data assimilation techniques which can be used to develop long-term climatology of the near-Earth space. He is the author or co-author of over 200 articles in journals and conference proceedings, one book, and three chapters of a book. He has participated in six short courses, serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Intelligent Automation and Soft Computing, and is a reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, Man Machines & Cybernetics, and Neural Networks. He is a member of the IEEE Control Society, Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, and Eta Kapa Nu. E-mail: homaifar@gmail.com
	Dr. Eran Hood (UAS) is an Associate Professor of Hydrology at the University of Alaska Southeast. Dr. Hood’s research interests are in hydrology and watershed-scale biogeochemistry. He has twelve years of experience studying hydro-biogeochemistry in rivers and streams using a suite of in-situ physical and optical sensors. In addition, he has developed new methods to characterize dissolved organic matter in aquatic ecosystems using a scanning fluorometer. In Juneau, he has interacted with NOAA scientists Tom Ainsworth and Carl Dierking at the National Weather Service. His research is currently funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Forest Service. He has mentored numerous undergraduate researchers at UAS as well as 2 PhD students through the University of Alaska Fairbanks (where he has an Affiliate appointment in the Water and Environmental Research Center). He has more than 30 peer-reviewed publications, several with undergraduate students as co-authors. Dr. Hood will continue working with students in areas of coastal ecosystems change. E-mail: eran.hood@uas.alaska.edu
	Dr. Sajid Hussain (FISK) is Chair of Department of Business Administration and an Associate Professor in Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Fisk University. He worked as Associate Professor and Assistant Professor in the Jodrey School of Computer Science, Acadia University, Canada, 2005-09. He received Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Manitoba, Canada, 2004. He taught as a full-time Instructor in the Computer Science Department at University of Manitoba from 2000-05. Further, he holds Adjunct Professor Positions in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University and Jodrey School of Computer Science at Acadia University, as well as a Visiting Lecturer position for SPIE. Dr. Hussain is investigating secure and energy efficient communication protocols in sensor networks for ubiquitous and pervasive applications such as environment monitoring and smart homes. He has published more than 70 refereed journal, conference, and workshop papers. His research is financially supported by several grants and contracts, such as Google/UNCF Computer Science Initiative, NSERC Canada, NRC Canada, AIF/ACOA, and NSHRF. He has received more than $250K for research funds in 2005-10, where he was PI for all the grants. He has co-organized 12 special issues in prestigious journals, 13 International conferences, and 15 workshops. He has served on more than 60 technical program committees and reviewed papers for 34 journals. Further, he has reviewed grant proposals for NSERC's Discovery, SPG, and RTI grants. He has supervised/co-supervised 2 PhD students, 5 MSc students, and numerous BSc students. He is a member of IEEE, IET, CIPS, CAIAC, and Sigma Xi societies. E-mail: shussain@fisk.edu
	Dr. Vipin Kumar (UM) is currently a William Norris Professor and Head of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota. He is also one of the PIs in the current NOAA-ISETCSC. Dr. Kumar served as the Director of Army High Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC) from 1988 to 2005. Kumar received the B.E. degree in electronics & communication engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (formerly, University of Roorkee), India, in 1977, the M.E. degree in electronics engineering from Philips International Institute, Eindhoven, Netherlands, in 1979, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from University of Maryland, College Park, in 1982. Kumar's current research interests include data mining, high-performance computing, and their applications in Climate/Ecosystems and Biomedical domains. His research has resulted in the development of the concept of isoefficiency metric for evaluating the scalability of parallel algorithms, as well as highly efficient parallel algorithms and software for sparse matrix factorization (PSPASES) and graph partitioning (METIS, ParMetis, hMetis). He has authored over 200 research articles, and has co edited or coauthored 10 books including widely used text books ``Introduction to Parallel Computing" and ``Introduction to Data Mining'', both published by Addison Wesley. Kumar has served as chair/co-chair for many international conferences and workshops in the area of data mining and parallel computing, including IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (2002) and International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (2001). In 2001, Kumar co-founded SIAM International Conference on Data Mining and served as its steering committee chair until 2007. Currently, Kumar serves on the steering committees of the SIAM International Conference on Data Mining, the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining and the IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine. Kumar is a founding co-editor-in-chief of Journal of Statistical Analysis and Data Mining, editor-in-chief of IEEE Intelligent Informatics Bulletin, and editor of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Book Series published by CRC Press/Chapman Hall. Kumar is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE and AAAS. Kumar received the 2009 Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Computer Science Department, University of Maryland College Park, and 2005 IEEE Computer Society's Technical Achievement Award for contributions to the design and analysis of parallel algorithms, graph-partitioning, and data mining. E-mail: kumar@cs.umn.edu
	Dr. Lei Qian (FISK) is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Fisk University and one of the PIs in the current NOAA-ISETCSC. He has twelve years of experience in studying the web programming, computer security, formal methods and applied logics. As a graduate student, he studied computer security, formal methods. Since his appointment at Fisk University, he has studied pattern recognition, image processing and web services and interacted with scientists at NOAA (E Kihn of NGDC, T Hanson, T. LeFebvre, M. Schultz of ESRL and C. Rivero of NMFS). Prof. Qian has mentored 20 undergraduate students, in which 10 students participated in NOAA-ISETCSC projects. He has received about $350K in funding in the past 5 years, has published 13 papers in peer-reviewed journal, given 5 presentations at national and regional meetings and written 4 book chapters. E-mail: leqian@gmail.com
	Dr. Michael Steinbach (UM) is a Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and is also one of the PIs in the current NOAA-ISETCSC. Michael Steinbach earned his B.S. degree in Mathematics, a M.S. degree in Statistics, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. Previously, he held a variety of software engineering, analysis, and design positions in industry at Silicon Biology, Racotek, and NCR. His research interests are in the area of data mining, bioinformatics, and statistics. He has authored over 30 research articles, and is a co-author of the data mining textbook, Introduction to Data Mining, published by Addison-Wesley. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM. E-mail: steinbac@cs.umn.edu

EDUCATION- OUTREACH, K-12 INFORMAL EDUCATION

	Mrs. Jessica Bohn is the Associate Director of the NOAA-ISET Cooperative Science Center. Ms. Bohn has served in the field of education since 1999. She has led science program initiatives at the school district level and as a school administrator and classroom teacher. She has been heavily involved in leading science curriculum projects, and has led school improvement for a “turnaround” school. She initiated and led highly attended events, such as a cultural expo, a science fair, and field experiences for 8th graders at the schools where she served. The resulting attendance for one such event far surpassed any previous event in the school’s recent history. She currently has a pending pre-proposal, written in collaboration with North Carolina State University, for a NOAA-OED Formal K -12 funding opportunity. Her academic preparation includes a concentration in weather and earth sciences in her undergraduate geography program, a Masters in Science Education program and a post- Masters in educational leadership program. Her work has resulted in 10 conference presentations, not including local presentations, 81 teachers supervised and 1 pending proposal (as PI). E-mail: jbohn@ncat.edu
	Dr. Frederika (Fraka) Harmsen (FRESNO) is a professor of geology and Associate Dean of Science & Mathematics at California State University, Fresno. Fraka's research interests include paleoclimatology, climate change and the integration of education and research. She recently completed a major report on climate change impacts and mitigation strategies for the central San Joaquin valley. She currently has $3.5M in research funding with $2.6M pending. Fraka is a PI on the current NOAA ISETCSC and has been instrumental in student outreach and recruitment as well as teacher and student summer workshops. E-mail: frakah@csufresno.edu
	Dr. Keith Schimmel (NCAT) is an associate professor of chemical engineering and the Chair of the Energy & Environmental Systems Department. Since 2005, Dr. Keith A. Schimmel has served as the first Director of the interdisciplinary Energy & Environmental Systems (EES) Ph.D. Program (www.ees.ncat.edu) at North Carolina A&T State University and since 2006 as the Director of Outreach and Education for the NOAA ISETCSC. In these roles he has helped to develop an Atmospheric Science Concentration in the EES Ph.D. Program, a B.S. Program in Atmospheric Sciences & Meteorology, and a University Studies course on Weather and Climate. The EES program has grown to an enrollment of 35 students, and 8 students have graduated from it. His interdisciplinary research interests are in the areas of engineering education, pollution prevention, biodegradable plastics, bioremediation, liquid membranes, and membrane devices. This work has resulted in 40 reviewed publications, 10 workshop presentations, 95 conference presentations, 10 high school summer research students advised, 60 undergraduate research students directed, 24 M.S. theses directed, a Ph.D. exchange student from the University of Mexico advised, one post-doc, and 55 proposals funded (29 as PI, ~$1,000,000). E-mail: schimmel@ncat.edu
	MR. MICHAEL PORTER is the Geoscience Education Specialist attached to the NOAA-ISET Cooperative Science Center. Mr. Porter has been involved with organized science education ever since participating as a high school student in a meteorological K-12 outreach program. While an undergraduate at The Florida State University, he joined the staff of that program, Florida EXPLORES, and fostered technical skills and weather knowledge in students and teachers. In addition to studying natural science, he developed museum displays and led outreach efforts for anthropological exhibitions and taught high school history. While pursuing graduate work in meteorology, Mr. Porter taught chemistry and meteorology at Tallahassee Community College, organized school visits by the North Florida chapter of the American Meteorological Society, and forecasted weather for 4FSU’s nightly student weathercast. His research has focused on long range pollution transport modeling and incorporated multiple field deployments, during which he provided support for NASA and NOAA research flight operations. Between supporting the recruitment and outreach efforts of the ISET center and the Africa Array program, Mr. Porter is attempting to complete his Ph.D. in meteorology. E-mail: mjporter@ncat.edu

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