Matt Biddle
I am currently finishing my Ph.D. in the Department of Geography at the University of Oklahoma with a sub-specialty of Natural Hazards and a dissertation topic that examines warning behavior and response in the 1999 Oklahoma City Area tornado. I have a professional background in environmental regulation and remediation, I'm a former Emergency Management Director of a rural Oklahoma town. I'm a long time volunteer with Oklahoma County Emergency Management. I was directly involved in the response and recovery for both the Murrah Bldg bombing and the 1999 tornadoes. My secondary interests in Geography include the Great Plains and Midwest. I am a ten year veteran driver for National Severe Storms Laboratory tornado intercept teams, and have also worked with National Geographic and the National Science Foundation on various tornado field projects, such as VORTEX.

Harold Brooks
I grew up in Saint Louis and went to William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri where I majored in physics and math. I took a year abroad there to do archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge. My graduate work spanned a range of atmospheric sciences, with a M.A. from Columbia modelling volcanic aerosols in the stratosphere and a Ph.D. from Illinois modelling severe thunderstorms. I came to NSSL in 1990 as a National Research Council post-doc and became federal in 1992. Since then, I've worked on a variety of aspects of severe and tornadic thunderstorms and their impacts, and the evaluation of weather forecasts. Outside of work, I try to do as much as I can with my family, and I'm a sports fan, particularly major league baseball. I've published a couple of articles on baseball, focuing on the (non-)existence of clutch hitters and the effects of rest on September performance.

Melissa Bukovsky
I am currently finishing my fourth year of graduate school at the University of Oklahoma. I finished up a master's in meteorology at OU in 2004 and am currently working on a doctorate. Before moving to Norman, OK, I lived in the Chicago area where I completed my undergraduate in meteorology at Northern Illinois University in 2002 after receiving an associate in science from the College of DuPage. My current research is focused on precipitation in climate models. I'm looking at the sensitivity of precipitation to convective parameterization and model resolution, potential future changes in regional precipitation in different climate change scenarios, and the implication of precipitation changes in surface hydrology. Outside of school, I'm an avid potter, so I spend much of my spare time covered in clay. I also enjoy reading, music and concerts, dancing, sewing, and spending time outdoors walking my cat.

Beth Clarke
I grew up in a small town near the city of Birmingham, England, where I met my husband. I graduated from the University of Reading (near London) in June 2001 receiving a Bachelors of Science in Meteorology with first class honours . In January 2002, I moved to Norman Oklahoma to attend graduate school at University of Oklahoma in the school of Meteorology. I graduated with a Masters degree in Professional Meteorology with a secondary area of study in Hydrology, January 2004. Throughout graduate school I worked as a Research Assistant at the National Severe Storms Lab for the Hydro-Meteorology research team (WISH), where my focus was on radar quality control and radar derived QPE. Following graduation I took a full time position as a Research Associate for the WISH research group. In November 2005 I began work at Weather Decision Technologies (WDT) as their Hydro-Meteorologist where I continue to work with radar data and the development of QPE/QPF for flood forecasting and commercial use. In my spare time I enjoy running both competitively and just for fun. I love spending time with friends and family that visit from England and keep busy as the president of my residents association.

Julie Demuth
I am a Visiting Scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research's (NCAR) Societal Impacts Program (SIP) where I'm co-organizing the Weather and Society * Integrated Studies (WAS*IS) workshops with Eve Gruntfest. I'm also collaborating with the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) in Fort Collins, CO, to estimate tropical cyclone intensity and wind structure using passive microwave satellite data. The algorithms we developed were transitioned to operations at the National Hurricane Center/Tropical Prediction Center (NHC/TPC) during 2005, where they will provide objective tropical cyclone intensity estimates. Prior to my current work at NCAR and with CIRA, I worked in science policy in Washington, D.C., for two years at the National Research Council's (NRC) Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (BASC) as a Program Officer. I worked on several studies while I was with BASC, some of which included: (a) flash flood forecasting in regions of complex terrain, (b) a research agenda for surface transportation, (c) critical issues in weather modification research, and (d) a review of the U.S. CLIVAR Project Office.

Sheldon Drobot
I am a Research Associate at the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR), housed within the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Colorado. My background is in remote sensing, atmospheric science, and statistics, and I now consider myself an Applied Climatologist. Much of my research focuses on the declining Arctic sea-ice cover and what that might mean for humans and the environment; through this work I have developed a series of decision-support tools and probabilistic sea-ice forecasts. However, I also am branching out into new areas, including trying to understand why people drive through flooded water; determining how atmospheric circulation affects grape growth; and assessing how weather patterns influence insect migration.

Christopher Godfrey
I am a doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma working toward improvements to a land surface model. The work combines surface and satellite observations of the soil, vegetation, and lower atmosphere in an effort to provide the model with the best possible initial conditions. After I completed my undergraduate work at Cornell University, I earned my M.S. degree at OU studying quantitative precipitation estimation. I sing and play several musical instruments, including the piano, flute, and alto sax. Growing up in Maine, I have a natural propensity toward outdoor activities such as long-distance running, bicycling, hiking, skiing, and camping, all of which I enjoy with the company of my wife and best friend, Elaine.

Elaine Godfrey
I am originally from Cincinnati, Ohio and am currently a doctoral student in meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. I work with the CASA radar project and assimilate simulated CASA data into the ARPS model using an ensemble Kalman square-root filter. I received my M.S. degree from OU in 2003 and studied the environment and statistics of tornadoes from quasi-linear convective systems. I studied physics and atmospheric science at The Ohio State University, where I received my B.S. degree in 2000. Outside of school/research work, I like to spend time with my best friend, Chris. I also particularly enjoy doing arts and crafts projects, many of which involve rubber stamping and other paper crafts, but I enjoy all sorts of new challenges such as polymer clay and crocheting. I enjoy playing classical piano, biking, racquetball, tennis, walking, reading, photography, camping, hiking, and traveling to new places.

Kevin Goebbert
I am currently a graduate student at OU finishing up my masters degree in meteorology. I completed my undergraduate degree in meteorology at Valparaiso University in May 2003. I have always been interested how meteorologists educate the public and how we deal with the misconceptions about the weather that has crept into society. I have also been interested in how meteorology is used by everyone, from farmers and pilots to making evacuation decisions. Outside of meteorology, I love music (Ask my officemates... I'm singing all the time!) and long talks with friends about anything, especially with a good drink in hand.

Eve Gruntfest
For the past 25 years I have been a geography professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. My research specialty is social science and weather with particular attention to flash floods and warning systems. I have had the opportunity to work in Trieste, Italy as a Fulbright Distinguished Chair of Geography in 2003 and I have been invited to work on flash flood mitigation issues in Italy, France, Australia, Slovenia, and elsewhere. I have the most fun hunting treasures in a thriftstore, walking along a beach, and cuddling with my partner Marc and my little dog Ziggy.

Jared Guyer, NOAA NWS Storm Prediction Center
I grew up on a farm in rural southeast Illinois, with a fascination for weather for as long as I can remember. I graduated from Valparaiso University in May 1999 with a B.S. degree. Upon graduation, I immediately began working with the National Weather Service (NWS) in La Crosse, WI. From there, I was a General Forecaster at NWS Hastings, NE for almost 3 years. Since August 2003, I have been a Mesoscale Assistant Forecaster at the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) in Norman, OK. My primary duties at SPC involve forecasting hazardous mesoscale phenomena, including severe convective storms, tornadoes, winter weather, and fire weather. My hobbies include softball, golf, storm admiration, and going to St. Louis Cardinals baseball games.

Mary Hayden
Mary Hayden is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs working with on an NSF funded study underway in Denver and Austin: "The Warning Project: Geographical and Psychological Components to Understand Warning Response and Improve Warning Messages for Short-Fuse Weather Events". Dr. Hayden is a co-PI for a NOAA funded study currently in its fourth year investigating the role of climate variability on the potential for dengue fever to emerge along the US/Mexico border. She will be starting a postdoc at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in August 2006 examining climate and health related issues. Mary has professional training in the health and behavioral sciences (Ph.D.) and geography (climatology, M.A.) and her research interests include community-focused interventions, infectious disease ecology, and the role of human-environmental interactions on disease transmission, particularly dengue fever and West Nile Virus. Dr. Hayden has worked as a science mentor for undergraduate students in Climate and Health at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and is a member of the scientific advisory board for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Border Infectious Disease Surveillance (BIDS) project.

Marguerite Keesee
I am currently a Program Specialist at the University of Oklahoma, Center for Applied Social Research where I serve as a senior analyst and program evaluator on two HRSA sponsored SPNS grants targeting HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and outreach to Hispanic and American Indian/Alaskan Native communities throughout the U.S. and an NCI funded community networks grant targeting the reduction of cancer health disparities in rural African American and American Indian communities in Oklahoma. I also serve as PI for two contracts with the Oklahoma State Department of Health which includes assessing the public health systems level of preparedness in responding to a potential influenza pandemic and the attitudes and health practices of school-aged children in regard to diet, nutrition and physical activity. I have professional training in the Sociology (Ph.D.) and have served as a research specialist for the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, the Oklahoma Department of Human Services and the Oklahoma State Department of Health. Some of the key projects I was privileged to be a part of as a research specialist for the State of Oklahoma include overseeing the operation and/or analysis of the State of Oklahoma's PRAMS and TOTS surveillance systems, the Birth Defects Registry, Family Planning, Maternity, and Vital Statistics data systems, as well as assisting in the implementation and analysis of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey across the state. In addition, I played an integral role in providing critical research associated with Welfare Reform and service restructuring and Child Welfare worker burn-out, preparing the Title V, Title X and March of Dimes needs assessments for the State of Oklahoma and assisting with the establishment, expansion and monitoring of Title X Family Planning services throughout the state. My current research interests include community-based participatory research particularly in the areas of medical and behavioral health disparities in special populations including infectious disease (STDs, HIV/AIDS, Cancer) and injury, substance abuse, health risk behaviors, juvenile delinquency and crime.

Kristen Kuhlman, University of Oklahoma
I am currently working on my Ph.D. in meteorology, specializing in storm electrification, modeling, and data assimilation. I received my B.S. from the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 2000 in atmospheric science with minors in math and physics. I was born in Massachusetts and became obsessed with weather about the same time I became obsessed with the Boston Red Sox. As I have progressed in my career, I have found myself more interested in societal impacts of weather and science policy. In my spare time, I enjoy mountain biking, yoga, watching Gilmore Girls and MLB, and learning to crochet

Daphne (Zaras) LaDue, University of Oklahoma
I'm currently going through a transformation from a meteorologist to an adult educator. I've now had four major career phases, first exploring 3 areas of research before moving into doing outreach for NSSL and becoming the PI and Director of the National Weather Center Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. The educational things got me interested in learning and my subsequent school work in adult education got me completely hooked on thinking about learning, so much so that I entered my 600th reference into EndNote a couple of months ago. Where I go from here is unclear: my interests are both with informal adult education related to the gulf between meteorologists and the general public and with the professional development of meteorologists. The professional development aspect surprised me as I came to realize meteorology has little conception of professional development. The wild west of where adult education meets meteorology awaits me....

Valliappa Lakshmanan (Lak)
I am a research scientist at CIMMS/NSSL working on developing automated real-time pattern recognition algorithms and visualization techniques for analysing, detecting and predicting severe weather phenomena. My background is in Electrical Engineering. I have degrees from Univ of Oklahoma (PhD), Ohio State University (MS) and the Indian Institute of Technology (BTech).

Carlie Lawson
I was born in Charleston, SC and grew up in Cottageville, a tiny town about 40 miles to the northwest. My parents reared us in true natural hazard fashion, tracking hurricanes each year on maps my dad collected. My dad took it a little further, taking me with him to check out whatever fire was burning in the county. I was hooked young. I moved to Norman, OK in 1990 to attend the University of Oklahoma, earning two Bachelor's degrees - one in Journalism and Mass Communications, and one in Film and Video Studies, then a Master's degree in Regional and City Planning with a specialty in Environmental Planning. My thesis examined disaster mitigation and response in Oklahoma's 1995, 1996, and 1998 drought and wildfire events. I currently serve as Operations Manager at the Environmental Verification and Analysis Center. I recently began working part-time as a consultant on municipal drought plans, and environmental and natural hazards education products. Very broadly, my research interests include drought, wildfires, hurricanes, organizational learning in hazard mitigation, risk communication, renewable energy, and the Internet as a hazards mitigation tool. In my free time I enjoy trail riding, guitar, reading about ancient religions, Web site design and development, and computer programming.

Michael Magsig
After growing up in a small college town in western Illinois during the active severe and weather seasons of the 1970s, I was hooked on severe and winter weather, music, and science at an early age. What better place for me than the University of Oklahoma? Norman, OK happens to be my occupational Nirvana, and I deeply appreciate my wonderful wife, May Yuan, and my two wonderful kids, Audrey and Evan, for supporting me in my career ambitions to significantly further the understanding, prediction, and warning for high impact weather. Outside of work I love spending time with my wife and kids, storm chasing, and tinkering with new technologies. I have stayed happy in Norman for nine years after my B.S. and M.S. in meteorology from OU. I am the Senior WDTB CIMMS Research Associate working though OU for the Warning Decision Training Branch, where I enjoy deeply rooting myself in warning decision making training and as much applied research as I can fit in after the kids go to sleep at night! I am the task lead for NOAA's NWS Weather Event Simulator, and I have spent much of my career developing simulation capabilities and simulation training with the WDTB among other things. I hope to contribute to the next generation of high impact weather research, products, and services with activities at the National Weather Center such as the Hazardous Weather Testbed and extensions of WAS*IS such as the expertise and NWS users/partners workshop we will be discussing this week for the upcoming Fall. Although I am a critical thinker, I like people and collaboration. I look forward to meeting everyone this week and developing some practical approaches to collaboration.

Patrick Marsh
I grew up in Fort Smith, AR and attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville where I graduated cum laude in the Summer of 05 with a degree in physics and math. I got married in June of 05 and moved to Norman the following weekend. My wife and I are both graduate students here at OU, with her being in the Math department, and myself being in the Meteorology department. While I am a first year Masters student, I plan on pursuing my PhD here at OU as well. Upon finishing my PhD, I plan on diving head first into the world of politics and policy with the hopes of bringing weather (back?) into the mainstream of society. Outside of school, I love sports, espcially baseball, and I have a foul ball from the National League Championship Series of 1997.

Renee McPherson
I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, home of the Badgers -- recent National Champions in both men's and women's ice hockey. I received a B.S. in Math and Meteorology at UW-Madison before coming to OU for my M.S. in Meteorology. I joined the team at the Oklahoma Climatological Survey in 1992. During my years at OCS, I've worked on many programs and activities, including K-12 educational outreach, the Oklahoma Mesonet, land-air-vegetation interactions (for my Ph.D.), and administration. Currently, I'm OCS's Acting Director, Co-Chair of the Oklahoma Mesonet Steering Committee, and Adjunct Assistant Professor in Meteorology. I'm an active member of the American Meteorological Society, serving on two AMS boards, one symposium committee, and one journal editorial board. My research interests include the influence of vegetation on the atmosphere, severe storms, mesoscale meteorology, road weather, and surface observing systems. I chair the committees of five graduate students and advise 15 undergrads. I spend time out of the office with my husband (Billy), our dog (Culzean), friends, my garden (which doesn't look like much right now), my church, and Billy's family in Edmond.

Daniel Melendez
Got my PhD in Atmospheric and Space Sciences from the University of Michigan. Was NASA-NRC Research Associate at NASA-MSFC. Joined the Naval Research Laboratory afterward, working on remote sensing and modelling of the upper atmosphere. Worked as operational meteorologist at WFO San Juan, and since 2001 have been on the staff at NOAA NWS Office of Science and Technology, working on radar and tropical weather.

Dale Morris
I am the manager of emerging outreach programs at the Oklahoma Climatological Survey at the University of Oklahoma. A native Okie, I helped conceive and develop the OK-FIRST program which supports Oklahoma's emergency management, fire, and law enforcement communities with a weather-based decision support system and an associated instructional curriculum. Recently, I completed an 18-month assignment with the National Weather Service's Warning Decision Training Branch to assist with the development, implementation, and delivery of their Advanced Warning Operations Course, which delivered content to over 2,100 NWS forecasters, managers, and support staff. I also developed additional distance learning modules for NOAA entitled "NOAA's Business Model" and "Team NOAA: Putting the Pieces Together". I received both bachelor's and master's degrees in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma. I also am a member of the planning committee for the National Severe Weather Workshop. In other activities, I enjoy playing the piano and I am active in my church, serving as music director and a teacher of adult men.

Rebecca Morss, NCAR Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division/Institute for the Study of Society and Environment
I am a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO. I have a PhD in atmospheric science; my PhD research focused on developing strategies for taking meteorological observations to improve weather forecasts important to society. Because I have wanted for many years to combine my interest in science with my interest in benefiting society, I now work both in traditional atmospheric science research and at the science/society interface. My current work includes four interconnected areas: 1) researching observing network design and atmospheric predictability; 2) researching societal use of and needs for weather information for decision-making; 3) researching public policy aspects of meteorology; and 4) integrating atmospheric science and socioeconomic/policy perspectives, to help design interdisciplinary projects and information for the benefit of society. In my free time (when I have some!), I enjoy hiking, mountain biking, skiing, gardening, ballroom dancing, cooking, and hanging out with my husband and our cat Elvis. But really, my favorite hobby is trying new things, so I often find myself exploring new hobbies as they come up or as people introduce me to them.

Dan O'Hair
I am a Professor of Communication and Director of the Institute for Communication Research at OU. I am primarily a message strategist with specialized research interests in risk communication, health communication, and communication and terrorism. Our work in the ICR currently focuses on the development of a community-based risk communication infrastructure program. I am relatively new to the weather community of scholars/practitioners but find the implications of our research in communication to have much in common with the exciting work being conducted by participants of this workshop.

Randy Peppler, Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies
I am the Associate Director for CIMMS, a position I have held since 1995. Previous to that, I was a research meteorologist at the Illinois State Water Survey from 1982 to 1995. I have B.S. and M.S. degrees in Atmospheric Science from Purdue University and a M.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I am also a Ph.D. student in Geography at the University of Oklahoma. During my years in meteorology I have become increasingly interested in the interface between weather, climate, and society. I am particularly interested in environmental policy issues and how knowledge is constructed and used during a policy debate, including who is involved in the process and what knowledge claims, reality perceptions, and issue representations they bring with them. My wife Diane and I have four sons: Adam is in college at Purdue and Kyle will be heading to TCU next fall, and the younger two (Drew and Noah) are in high school and middle school, respectively. I like going to the beach and hiking in the mountains (neither of which exist in Oklahoma), and spending time with my family. I occasionally brew beer and never pass up a nice glass of wine. That's me standing in front of a palmetto in Panama City Beach - my dad had it planted in memory of my mom at his VFW post.

Corey Potvin
I'm an M.S. Meteorology student at the University of Oklahoma. I grew up in Maine and earned B.S. degrees in meteorology and math at Lyndon State College in Vermont. I hope to pursue a career in severe weather research once I obtain my Ph.D.

Liz Quoetone
I grew up in southwest Oklahoma watching squall lines approach with my meteorologist-brother from our roof-top vantage point...too ignorant to worry about lightning back then. I got my degree from OU and began working for the National Weather Service in Tulsa while still in school. I was a forecaster at the NWS office in Oklahoma City/Norman for 10 years doing the greatest job with the worst hours in the NWS. The last year of this was highlighted by the Operational Test and Evaluation of the brand new WSR-88D (NEXRAD) radar during the Spring of 1989. Shortly after, I was hired as an instructor for the newly developed Operations Training Facility in Norman, whose mission it was to teach the new radar operations to over 2500 NWS forecasters. In 2000, my organization morphed into the Warning Decision Training Branch and the mission expanded its focus to that of helping foster better decision making in the short-fused warning environment of NWS forecasters. This includes all aspects of the science, technology, and human factors contributions to this effort. I am currently Commissioner of Committees for the National Weather Association. I have been a Camp Fire leader for over 10 years. I go to the ocean every chance I get and to a local monastery twice a year.

Tarek Rashed, University of Oklahoma, Center for Spatial Analysis
I have joined the faculty at the Department of Geography at OU in August 2003. I have actively been involved, professionally and academically, within an international, multi-disciplinarily career in the fields of GIS and remote sensing for the past 13 years, during which I worked in many projects in the United States, United Kingdom, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Ghana, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. My research interests span many interdisciplinary areas, including the use of GIS and remote sensing for hazards risk and vulnerability analyses and disaster management, modeling population dynamics, systems analysis and design, fuzzy logic, virtual GIS, internet mapping, techniques of urban remote sensing, and more recently GIS education.

Jessica Rathke
I am a graduate research assistant for the Oklahoma Climatological Survey. I grew up in southeast Michigan and moved to Oklahoma in 2003. I received my B.S. in Meteorology in December 2005 from OU, and I began working on my M.S. in Meteorology in January 2006. I will be researching how to improve road pavement temperature forecasts using data from the Oklahoma Mesonet. As an undergraduate I worked as a teaching assistant for the School of Meteorology and as a research assistant with the Center for the Analysis and Prediction of Storms. I also tutored physics, math, and chemistry for two years. My research interests include decision support systems, communicating weather information to decision makers, and GIS applications in meteorology. In my spare time I enjoy cooking, reading, watching movies, and driving to Dallas every other weekend to see my boyfriend.

Kevin Scharfenberg
My name is Kevin Scharfenberg. I'm 29 years old and originally from Little Rock, Arkansas. I earned a B.S. in Meteorology from OU in 1999 and an M.S. in Meteorology from OU in 2002. I worked for 3 summers at the NWS office in Little Rock during my undergraduate study before making the move to NSSL. My current work interests include the future of the hazardous weather warning system, warning decision-making, and applications development for dual-pol and phased array radar.

Russell Schneider, NOAA-NWS Storm Prediction Center
I am currently the Science Support Branch Chief at the NOAA Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Olahoma. My responsibilities span all facets of the SPC science, collaborative research, information technlogy and training programs. I have B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Atmospheric Science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and worked for about a year at the NOAA National Centers for Enviromental Prediction (NCEP) Environmental Modeling Center in a post-doctoral appointment. I then moved into Federal Service and spent four years as the Science and Operations Officer at the NCEP Hydrometeorolgical Prediction Center, before moving to my current position at the SPC in 1997. My primary research specialties involve synoptic and mesoscale meteorology with a focus on extratropical cyclones, jet streaks, and embedded mesoscale systems. Current interests also include the climatology and impacts of major severe thunderstorm and tornado outbreaks, but my primary professional responsiblities are the maintenance, developement, and refinement of SPC 24x7 hazardous mesoscale weather forecast services. Interdisciplinary studies wil play a major role in optimization of our current severe weather forecast services and in the design of future services.

David Schultz, Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, and NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory
Dr. Schultz received his B.S. degree from M.I.T. in 1987, his M.S. degree from the University of Washington in 1990, and his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Albany in 1996. He then accepted a two-year National Research Council Postdoctoral Research Associateship at the NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL). Currently, he is a research meteorologist at NSSL with the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies at the University of Oklahoma (OU), adjunct faculty member in the School of Meteorology at OU, Editor of Monthly Weather Review, and a contributor to Canoe & Kayak magazine.

Mark Shafer
During his 15 years experience with the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, Dr. Shafer participated in the development of the Oklahoma Mesonet, including selecting site locations and developing the first quality-assurance procedures. As leader of the Climate Information Group, Dr. Shafer routinely interacts with state and local decision-makers to tailor weather and climate information to address specific needs. He remains actively involved in the NIDIS planning process and contributed to the development of Oklahoma's drought monitoring decision-support system. Dr. Shafer holds a Masters Degree in Meteorology and a Ph.D. in Political Science. His dissertation focused upon how weather and climate information is incorporated into state drought planning efforts.

Travis Smith
I am a University of Oklahoma research meteorologist based at the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma. I lead the Severe Weather Warning Applications and Technology Transfer (SWAT) group, which works closely with both researchers and operational meteorologists across the United States to develop severe storm analysis tools that assist forecasters in the warning decision-making process. As I grew up in Oklahoma, I was always fascinated by severe weather, and hold both B.S. and M.S. degrees in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma. When I'm not working I enjoy spending lots of time with my wife Melodie and our three young daughters.

Alan Stewart
I am an associate professor in the Department of Counseling and Human Development at The University of Georgia. I have been interested in weather and its effects upon people since I was about 10 years old. Growing up in North Carolina, I became interested in learning how to predict weather so that I might know when we might have snow and, consequently, enjoy a weather holiday from school. Now, I guess the desire to miss school is sort of funny since I have ended up working in the University. I also observed how I and others seemed to feel differently depending upon the prevailing weather conditions. Weather observation and recording has always been a hobby-I really enjoy working on and restoring older weather equipment (I have a de-commissioned 8" rain gage that has USWB engraved on the side!). Although I did not initially choose to have a career path in atmospheric sciences, I am now pursuing a certificate in this field through the University of Georgia. I also am expanding my research program in psychology to embrace topics in meteorology and climatology. To this end, I have developed a measure of weather salience (i. e., the extent to which people find weather and climate important to them) and a language-based measure that can be used to characterize the dimensions of people's climate experiences. I also am peoples' understanding of hurricane warnings. In addition to weather, my hobbies include cooking, photography, and tinkering with older cars.

Margret Sturgis
Currently, I am a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma pursuing a Master's degree in Meteorology. I am working under the supervision of Dr. Renee McPherson and the Oklahoma Climatological Survey. My graduate work will be conducting spatial analyses of the Mesonet rainfall data. I also have an interest in GIS, and its methods for disseminating meteorological information. I graduated with a Bachelor's in Meteorology from OU in May 2005. I am originally from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and have been a Sooner Fan all my life. In my spare time, I enjoy sewing and knitting. I am an avid reader, and enjoy every genre, especially Harry Potter.

May Yuan, University of Oklahoma, Center for Spatial Analysis
May's research interest is in geographic representation, spatiotemporal information modeling, and applications of geographic information technologies to dynamic systems. Her research projects center on temporal GIS for meteorological applications and representation models for dynamic geographic phenomena, such as wildfires, rainstorms, air-pollution plumes, and landcover change. She also has been developing methods for spatiotemporal query and analysis on these phenomena.