Management Team
Corporate Team Provides Guidance, Encourages Entrepreneurial Spirit
AER scientists and staff are leaders in research, academic, and commercial communities around the world. Our management team members are recognized for excellence by organizations including NASA, the United States Senate, the American Meteorological Society, and the United Nations. The management team provides a flexible infrastructure within a collaborative atmosphere for AER's scientific and technical expertise in order to maximize the benefit to the customer.Nien Dak Sze, Ph.D., Chairman
As AER's founder, Dr. Sze is an established leader in atmospheric sciences with major air quality breakthroughs in industry, government and academic communities in the United States and around the world. Upon receiving his doctorate from Harvard University, Dr. Sze's work in air quality was instrumental in the global shift away from harmful CFCs, controlling global methane, and preventing further depletion of the ozone layer. He has chaired and served national and international committees including the U.S. EPA's Science Advisory Board, the Board of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, and the Harvard University Committee on Environment.Cecilia Sze, President and CEO
As co-founder of AER, Ms. Sze leads AER's strategic development and research program. Her key objectives are to remain at the forefront of atmospheric science by developing premier applied scientific applications for the commercial sector backed by cutting-edge research and development. Ms. Sze earned her B.S. in Chemistry from Purdue University and an MBA from Northeastern University. Ms. Sze is a member of the Board of the Asian American Bank and Trust.Ron Isaacs, Executive Vice-President
Mr. Isaacs provides operational leadership, business development, technical strategic vision, and decision making for all aspects of business conducted within the Programs and Systems (P&S), Research and Development (R&D), Space Weather (SW), Weather Impacts on Sensing Technologies (WIST), and Commercial Products (CP) Divisions at AER. He is author of numerous refereed journal articles as well as developer of the Isaacs scattering approximation; used in DoD community atmospheric transmission models such as MODTRAN (Isaacs et al, 1986). A member of AMS, IEEE, and SPIE, he holds ME and MS degrees in Applied Physics and Earth and Planetary Physics from Harvard University.Nelson Bonito, Vice President, Space Weather Division
Mr. Bonito, Vice President of AER's Space Weather Division, has interfaced with the scientific community at AFRL for over 24 years. He is currently managing the research, operations and support of space weather phenomenology and physics, space weather forecasting, and space weather programs, data and communications support, and decision aids for traditional government customers as well as development of new markets.
He has designed multi-processor techniques for the reduction and analysis of real time telemetry for AFRL experiments flown on five space shuttle missions. He also designed, developed, and published the AFGL Interactive Targeting System used during the STS-' mission to support the on-orbit mission planning and the accurate sensor tracking of the CIRRIS-1A sensor from the space shuttle platform. Prior to joining AER, Mr. Bonito was a Principal Investigator/Project Manager for Radex, Inc.
David B. Hogan
David Hogan is currently Vice President of the Programs and Systems Division at AER. He received a B.S in physical sciences and an M.S. in meteorology (remote sensing) from the University of Maryland. With almost thirty years of advanced system design and development experience, Mr. Hogan's career focus has been on the development of advanced science solutions for challenging environmental and remote sensing problems and transition to operational systems. He has extensive experience managing large programs with diverse technical teams composed of multiple contractors and has been successful in delivering tasks on schedule and within budget. He also manages the group that developed and supports AERs operational forecast products designed specifically for the financial markets.Ross N. Hoffman, Ph.D., Vice President, Research and Development, Chief Scientist
Dr. Hoffman's principal areas of interest are objective analysis and assimilation methods, atmospheric dynamics, climate theory and atmospheric radiation. He has made significant contributions in the field of data assimilation, including the development of some variational techniques. He is a member of the NSCAT Science Team and the EOS SeaWinds Science Team. Dr. Hoffman holds a magna cum laude BS from Brown University, a MA in mathematics from Boston University and a Ph.D. in meteorology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to AER, Dr. Hoffman was at the Goddard Laboratory for Atmospheric Sciences, first as a NCR RRA followed by acting as a USRA visiting scientist.Jean-Luc Moncet, Vice President, Remote Sensing Division
Mr. Moncet is heading the Remote Sensing Programs at AER, which oversees the activities of the Infrared, Microwave, Trace gases and Cloud remote sensing groups. During his accumulated sixteen years of experience in infrared, microwave and UV remote sensing and radiative transfer modeling, he has lead the EDR algorithm development effort for the NPOESS/CrIMSS payload and is currently leading the algorithm development effort for the NPOESS/CMIS instrument. Mr. Moncet has served as principal investigator in several other government funded research programs and has been involved in the DoD DMSP Block 6 program, the NPOESS Phase0 study and contributed to the development of the Air Force TACNEPH nephanalysis program. He is co-developer of the Unified Retrieval concept, initially applied to the DMSP Block 5D-3 microwave sensors and now used in the CMIS, AMSU, CrIS and OMPS EDR algorithms, and participated to the SSMT-2 and SSMIS cal/val effort. Since joining AER, he has developed high speed, high spectral resolution radiative transfer algorithms (including the Optimal Spectral Sampling (OSS) method [US Patent] and the CHARTS code for monochromatic radiance calculations in scattering atmospheres) and inversion algorithms for application to space borne infrared down-looking and limb sensors, airborne and ground based interferometers. He also provided support to the aerospace industry for several instrument trade studies. Other areas of activity include cloud properties retrieval from infrared spectrometric measurements and combined microwave/electro-optical imagers, NWP model assimilation and radiation/climate studies. Mr. Moncet is member of the NASA AMSR and AIRS science teams.
Maria A. Pirone, Vice President, Commercial Division
Ms. Pirone, Vice President of the Commercial Division at AER, has over twenty-nine years of experience in information technology, and more than eighteen years in weather information services. During her career she has held management positions in both the marketing and technical development of weather products and services. She is currently managing the technology transfer of atmospheric and environmental research to commercial products and services for use in the energy, financial, broadcast and government markets.She received a BS in Chemistry (1976) and an Executive MBA in Finance (1987) both from Suffolk University in Boston. She is currently serving on the National Science Foundation Geosciences Advisory Committee, the Science Steering Committee for the US Weather Research Program (USWRP), the Executive Committee for The Weather Coalition (an advocacy group for the weather industry), and the American Meteorological Society's (AMS) Societal Impacts Committee.