2015 GMAO Peer Award Winners
January 21, 2016
We extend our congratulations to the winners of the 2015 GMAO Peer Awards.
These selections were made by a small committee of GMAO members, including civil servants, research institute staff, and support contract staff. Nominations were solicited from the entire GMAO. Senior management were excluded from being nominated and did not participate in the selection process.
The winners are listed in different categories of "Scientific, Technical or Outreach Support," "Scientific Achievement," "Administrative of Business Support," "Outstanding Contributions by a New GMAO Member" (who has been in GMAO for less than two years), and "Long-Term Achievement".
Scientific, Technical, or Outreach Support
Sarith Mahanama
Category: Science Support
Citation: For tireless support to the land modeling group resulting in a set of new, fully tested, state-of-the-art land boundary conditions that will be used by the GMAO for years to come.
Austin Conaty
Category: Outreach Support
Citation: For your tireless work supporting 11 different NASA and NOAA field campaigns in 2015. Your outstanding support helps publicize GMAO products, increases community support for the GMAO, and enhances the reputation of the GMAO abroad.
Operational Team: Su-Jen Fan, Ruth LaBelle, and Ann Melton
Category: Technical Support
Citation: For your unparalleled dedication monitoring the GEOS-5 system 365-days a year, ensuring quality GMAO products are always available on schedule to important internal and external NASA customers.
Scientific Achievement
Young-Kwon Lim
Citation: For exceptional scientific achievements spanning numerous subjects, including high-resolution tropical cyclone simulations, Arctic climate variability, planetary-scale teleconnections and associated Rossby wave dynamics, and extreme weather events. Dr. Lim also authored or co-authored seven peer-reviewed articles in 2015.
Santha Akella
Citation: For your successful implementation of the diurnal layer component in GEOS-5 to improve model forecasts of skin temperature, and for the development of required analysis components to better assimilate radiance observations by making use of improved modeled skin temperature.
Nikki Privé
Citation: For your outstanding work in developing and validating the GMAO OSSE system, including detailed examination of the use of the G5NR nature run for generating synthetic observations.
Virginie Buchard-Marchant
Citation: For your sustained excellence in evaluating GEOS-5 aerosol reanalysis products and for significant contribution to lidar simulators in support of the CATS and ACE missions.
Long-Term Achievement
Michael Bosilovich
Citation: For sustained scientific and technical contributions to GMAO climate research and reanalyses. Your hard work and dedication to the GMAO's Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) projects has been fundamental to the GMAO’s success.
Administrative or Business Support
Sarah Nipwoda
Category: Administrative Support
Citation: For continued and sustained excellence in administrative support to the GMAO front office and for providing truly superior assistance to the GMAO scientific and technical staff.
GMAO System Administration Team: Richard Mollel, Chi-Ching (Cliff) Liu, Timothy Luniewski, and Oscar Hendrick
Category: Business Support
Citation: For remarkable customer service to the GMAO staff and for expertly maintaining the computer hardware and software systems so vital to GMAO operations.
Outstanding Contribution by a New GMAO Member
Patricia Castellanos
Citation: For successful development of geostationary instrument simulators and generation of synthetic observations for the TEMPO, GOES-R, GEMS and SENTINEL-4 satellites.
