GMAO’s Summer Interns Engage with the Goddard Community
08.20.2019
Every summer, hundreds of interns from across the country come to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to advance and engage in the center’s diverse programs, projects and events. Organized by the Goddard Office of Education, the Summer Intern Poster Session showcases their contributions to the NASA community.
GMAO's interns took part in this year’s session in the Building 28 atrium on Thursday, August 1, showcasing the work they accomplished during their summer internships.
Intern Katherine Breen graduated from Portland State University in 2013 with a B.S. in Geology and a minor in Mathematics. She has just completed the fourth year of her PhD in the Department of Geosciences at Baylor University, focusing on machine/deep learning (ML/DL) applications in the physical sciences, specifically hydrology. Her research interests include both physics-based and data-driven modeling of land-atmosphere interactions, ML/DL enhancements to existing GCMs, and uncertainty quantification of ML/DL models. Her plan is to present both her own research and the internship work results at AGU with mentor Donifan Barahona. Katherine’s poster was entitled Effects of volcanic emissions on clouds during Kilauea degassing events.
Intern Paul Lin is currently a rising junior at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in Earth Science and minoring in Computer Science. He is interested in the effects of climate change on land use and global security, and thus, after his NASA internship, hopes to study earth science data within the defense department. Paul’s GMAO internship mentor was Brent Smith and his poster was entitled Tracking Erroneous Measurements for Earth’s Planetary Operations.
Intern Gwen Davidson is an undergraduate studying Math at Bowdoin College, entering senior year this fall (2019). She hopes to do data-driven work in a science related field. Gwen’s GMAO internship mentor was Donifan Barahona and her poster was entitled The Effect of Ice Nucleation Schemes on Cloud Feedback.
Intern Lennard Poliakov is an aspiring programmer with experience in Python, C and Java, as well as robotics experience. His interests include geology, engineering and applied physics. As part of his internship, he analyzed El Niño forecast data of different models in comparison to the GMAO model using anomaly correlation coefficients. He also programmed an interactive tool in Python to visually assesses the skill of different models based on user input. Lennard’s GMAO internship mentor was Anna Borovikov and his poster was entitled Skill Assessment of ENSO Forecast.
Congratulations on a job well done!
Pictured, left to right: Paul Lin, Lennard Poliakov, Gwen Davidson and Katherine Breen
