Dr Carlo Buontempo, Director, Copernicus Climate Change Service, Copernicus Department, ECMWF

Wednesday 27th November: Operational climate services in Europe: the case of the Copernicus Climate Change Service

Carlo Buontempo coordinates the activities of a number of international contracts working on the interface between climate science and decision making in sectors ranging from energy to city planning. Carlo completed a PhD in physics at University of L'Aquila in 2004 then he moved to Canada for his post-doc before joining the Met Office.

Carlo worked at the Hadley Centre for almost a decade where he led the climate adaptation team and more recently the climate service development team. In this role he led numerous projects involving climate change adaptation and regional modelling in Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. In 2012 Carlo became the scientific coordinator of EUPORIAS, and project funded by the European Commission through the 7th framework programme.

In 2019 Carlo was appointed as Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Dr Ilene Carpenter, Earth Sciences Segment Director, Cray Inc.

Monday 25th November: Shasta for Modeling, Simulation, Analytics and AI for Weather and Climate

Ilene earned her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin in 1987, and after her postdoctoral research in computational chemistry she joined Cray Research, supporting molecular dynamics and electronic structure applications. Ilene moved into the Environmental Applications group in 1996, where she parallelized weather models to run on the Cray T3D and T3E systems. She has held several positions leading the environmental applications and benchmarking groups at SGI and Cray.

In 2009, Ilene left SGI to work as a computational scientist at US Dept. of Energy laboratories. After a year at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, she moved to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory where she led the development of technical specifications for the acquisition of Peregrine, NREL's flagship HPC system, and for NREL's next system. She returned to Cray in 2018 as Earth Sciences segment director.

Scott Carpentier, Manager of Antarctic Meteorology, Bureau of Meteorology

Monday 25th November: What we've learned from observing Antarctic weather and climate

Scott is Manager of Antarctic Meteorology at the Bureau and oversees the weather services that support all Australian Antarctic program operations at sea, in the air or on the frozen ground. Scott is also a member of the World Meteorological Organisation's Executive Council's Expert Panel on Polar and High Mountains Observations, Research and Services (WMO EC PHORS), where he is co-chair of the Services Task Team. He also sits on the committee for the annual Workshop on Antarctic Meteorology and Climate (WAMC) and the Year of Polar Prediction Southern Hemisphere (YOPP SH) Observations planning team.

Jeff Craven, Chief, Statistical Modeling Branch, U.S. National Weather Service

Tuesday 26th November: The National Blend of Models: A Statistically Post-processed Multi-model Ensemble

Jeff attended San Jose State University and received a B.S. in Meteorology in 1988. Mr. Craven also earned an M.S. in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma in 2001. After briefly working in the private sector from 1988-1991 at Accu-Weather, Inc, Mr. Craven began his 28 year NOAA/National Weather Service (NWS) career in 1991, starting as a Meteorologist Intern before progressing to Science and Operations Officer (2002-2006).

Jeff was promoted to NWS Central Region Headquarters (Kansas City, Missouri) Scientific Services Division Chief in 2015, and oversaw the activities of nearly 40 Science and Operations Officers in 14 states from Colorado to Kentucky. He then moved to NWS Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, as Chief of the Statistical Modeling Branch 2017-present, where he leads the development of National Blend of Models (NBM) and Model Output Statistics (MOS).

Dr William Dubyak, Vice President, Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning, USAA P&C

Thursday 28th November: Meteorological Data and Machine Learning: A View from the Customer

Will Dubyak leads Data and Analytics at USAA, an insurance carrier in San Antonio, TX. Will has a PhD in Inferential Statistics from Stanford University. He is an expert in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, with deep experience in delivery of advanced analytics to global public sector clients (including the Government of Australia). Will served 30 years in the US Navy prior to time at IBM and Amazon.

Jan Flynn, Chief Metocean Engineer, Woodside Energy Ltd.

Monday 25th November: Offshore Industry Future Needs

Jan heads up Woodside's metocean team. She has more than 30 years' experience in Applied Meteorology and Oceanography in the oil and gas sector, including periods working within BP, Shell and now Woodside and is a Fellow of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology. Prior to joining Woodside, she spent six years as Lead Metocean Engineer in Shell Australia, working on the Prelude FLNG Project. Whilst with Shell Australia, Jan was instrumental in initiating a Joint Industry Project with the Bureau, sponsored by Chevron, INPEX, Shell and Woodside, to improve tropical cyclone forecasting, using bias correction of the ECMWF ensemble forecasts and an extension of the the Bureau's ACCESS-TC model suite. She has also served as co-chair of the Australian Forum for Operational Oceanography and is Woodside's representative on the Advisory Board of the University of Western Australia Industrial Transformation Research Hub for Offshore Floating Systems.

Dr Ailie Gallant, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Science at Monash University

Thursday 28th November: Improving Climate Literacy Through Community And TV News

Dr Ailie Gallant is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment in the Faculty of Science at Monash University. Her work examines climate variability and change in climate extremes, particularly drought, on multiple time and spatial scales.

In addition to her research, Dr Gallant is a keen science communicator. She has been a host of community radio 3RRR's Einstein-A-Go-Go Science Show for the past 4 years. In her role as Deputy Direction of the Monash Climate Change Communications Research Hub (MCCCRH), Dr Gallant has taken an increasing leadership role in climate change communication. Through MCCCRH she has been actively involved in projects providing regular climate columns in community newspapers and providing climate information to TV meteorologists around the country.

Andrew Just, ForecastBuilder Manager, U.S. National Weather Service

Tuesday 26th November: A Streamlined Forecast Process utilizing ForecastBuilder in the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) and the Associated Culture Change

Andrew Just is a Techniques Development Meteorologist for Central Region Headquarters in the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS). Additionally he is the developer and manager of the ForecastBuilder program which is installed across much of the NWS. Andrew has been intimately involved with gridded forecasting since the Graphical Forecast Editor was introduced into NWS operations nearly two decades ago, including technological advances utilizing model blending, developing and sharing more scientifically sound techniques, and managing the associated cultural impacts with more forecast automation. He has been employed with the NWS for over 20 years, working at Weather Forecast Offices in Marquette, Michigan and La Crosse, Wisconsin, the Storm Prediction Center (a national center) and now at Central Region Headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. Andrew holds a bachelors degree of meteorology from the University of Oklahoma.

Prof David Karoly, Leader, Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub, National Environmental Science Program

Thursday 28th November: Plans for the next generation of national and regional climate projections for Australia

David Karoly is Leader of the Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub in the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program, based in CSIRO. He is also an honorary Professor at the University of Melbourne. He is an internationally recognised expert on climate change and climate variability.

Professor Karoly is a member of the National Climate Science Advisory Committee. During 2012-2017, he was a member of the Climate Change Authority, which provides advice to the Australian government on responding to climate change, including targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He has been involved in the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001, 2007, 2014 and 2021 in several different roles. He was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2019 and was awarded the 2015 Royal Society of Victoria Medal for Scientific Excellence in Earth Sciences.

Hans-Joachim Koppert, Director, Weather Forecasting Services, Deutscher Wetterdienst

Tuesday 26th November: Automating the Warning Process at DWD – Lessons Learned

Hans-Joachim Koppert is head of the weather forecasting business area at Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), the national meteorological service of Germany. He studied meteorology in Darmstadt. After working as a research scientist at the University of Karlsruhe he joined DWD working on the development of forecasting systems and, subsequently, was responsible for application development. Before becoming a member of the executive board of directors he was leading the numerical weather prediction department. Hans-Joachim Koppert is interested in all aspects of the weather forecasting process from modeling to customer advisory service.

Sujay Kumar, Hydrological Sciences Lab, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Tuesday 26th November: Remote sensing and data assimilation for the characterization of terrestrial water cycle

Sujay Kumar is a research physical scientist in the Hydrological Sciences Lab at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He received a M.S. in environmental engineering and a PhD in civil and computer aided engineering from North Carolina State University. Sujay obtained a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in civil engineering. Sujay's expertise is in the areas of land surface hydrology, remote sensing, data assimilation, and machine learning. He is the technical lead for the NASA Land Information System (LIS; lis.gsfc.nasa.gov), a comprehensive modeling system for land surface modeling. His research aims to explore novel ways of exploiting the information from observations in modeling and to transition the research advancements for water availability applications that are critical for society.

Dr Sean Milton, Associate Director of Foundation Science, Met Office

Monday 25th November: Seamless Model Development for Future Weather and Climate Services

Sean joined the Met Office in 1986 as a physics graduate from the University of Sheffield and spent his early research career in 30-day ensemble forecasting. In 1992 he moved into NWP to focus on diagnosing systematic errors in short-range (1-5 day) forecasts and from 1997-2002 was manager of the Global Model Development and Diagnostics group. In 2010 he became section head of the Global Model Evaluation and Development (GMED) and from September 2019 has a new role as Associate Director of Foundation Science with responsibility for the delivery of underpinning science in physical parametrisations, dynamics and observations all delivering into seamless global and regional (km scale) models for weather and climate. His personal research interests have been in (i) seamless coupled global model development and (ii) developing process based diagnostics and using observations to understand the sources of systematic errors in the coupled global models across timescales.

Prof Ann Nicholson, Deputy Dean Research, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University

Thursday 28th November: Machine Learning at Monash University and Potential Applications in Meteorology

Ann Nicholson is a Professor and Deputy Dean Research in the Faculty of Information Technology. Other recent leadership roles including (Acting) Deputy Dean 2016-2017, and Associate Dean (Education) 2014-2016. After completing her BSc (Hons) and MSc in Computer Science at the University of Melbourne, in 1988 she was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, where she did her doctorate in the Robotics Research Group. After completing a post-doc at Brown University, she returned to Australia to take up a lecturing position position at Monash in 1994. Prof. Nicholson specialises in the broad area of Artificial Intelligence, a sub-discipline of computer science. She is a leading international researcher in the specialised area of Bayesian networks, now the dominant technology for probabilistic causal modelling in intelligent systems. She has published more than 100 peer reviewed papers, co-authored the well-received book "Bayesian Artificial Intelligence", and attracted more than $8M in research funding. She has applied Bayesian Network technology to problem-solving in many domains including meteorology, epidemiology, medicine, education and environmental science.

Dr Joao de Souza, Physical Oceanographer, Metocean Solutions

Tuesday 26th November: Present and future of ocean forecast in New Zealand - New perspective under the Moana Project

Joao's expertise is in interdisciplinary ocean processes and data assimilative hydrodynamic simulations. Following his PhD in Ocean Engineering at Rio de Janeiro Federal University, Brazil, in 2008, Joao completed postdoctoral internships at the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea - IFREMER in 2011 and the University of Hawaii in 2014. Afterwards, he worked for 3 years as Associate Researcher for CICESE, in Mexico. During this period, he was responsible for implementing 4DVar data assimilation schemes in operational ocean models and for reanalysis generation, developing lagrangian analysis methods for model evaluation, and coupling waves-biogeochemical-circulation models. Joao joined MetOcean / MetService in 2018 acting as Science Leader for the MetOcean Research and Development Team, and being responsible for the modelling component of the Moana Project.

Dr Kevin Tory, Senior Research Scientist, Bureau of Meteorology

Tuesday 26th November: Pyrocumulonimbus Firepower Threshold

Kevin Tory is a Senior Research Scientist in the High Impact Weather team within the research arm of the Bureau of Meteorology. His research interests include tropical cyclones, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and recently fire weather. His current research on pyrocumulonimbus fuses his passion for fire weather and thunderstorms.

Prof Ian Turner, Director Water Research Laboratory, University of New South Wales

Thursday 28th November: Beach Erosion Early Warning System (EWS): A New National Research Initiative

Ian currently holds the positions of Professor of Coastal Engineering and Director of the Water Research Laboratory (WRL), a facility of the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UNSW Sydney. Established in 1959, WRL is regarded both nationally and internationally as the birth place of coastal engineering research and practice in Australia. Ian is a Fellow of Institution of Engineers Australia and in 2020 will jointly Chair the American Society of Civil Engineers' International Conference on Coastal Engineering ICCE2020 to be held in Sydney.