Dr. Alvarado has extensive experience in modeling the gas- and aerosol-phase chemistry of the atmosphere, with a specific focus on the chemistry of smoke plumes from biomass burning and their impact on atmospheric composition, air quality, and climate. Dr. Alvarado also works on atmospheric radiative transfer model development with an emphasis on the interaction of aerosols and radiation and...
Author Bios
Our world-renowned scientists and technologists excel in advancing the scientific understanding of the Earth’s environment and planetary atmospheres.
We publish our wide-ranging, in-depth studies of the Earth, its oceans, its atmosphere and extraterrestrial forces that influence our planet in peer-reviewed journals. Click here to view research by AER scientists in the resource library.
We invite you to contact individuals including selected Atmospheric and Environmental Research scientists, authors and bloggers featured below. Or click here to view the management team.
Kyle Beatty, CCM, Senior VP Business Solutions
As a member of AER's senior executive team, Mr. Beatty is responsible for AER's B2B product vision and market engagement and he also serves as AER's primary liaison with other divisions of Verisk Analytics. His team establishes product development requirements and drives customer adoption of weather and climate-related risk management and decision support products and services...
Karen Cady-Pereira, Staff Scientist
Since joining AER Karen Cady-Pereira has worked on oceanographic research such as heat flux at the ocean surface and remote sensing of ocean color, while her main focus has been on radiative transfer modeling and retrievals of trace atmospheric species from satellite measurements. Ms. Cady-Pereira developed the ammonia retrieval algorithm for the AURA TES instrument and is working on...
Judah Cohen, Ph.D., Principal Scientist and Director of Seasonal Forecasting
Dr. Cohen joined Atmospheric and Environmental Research in 1998. Prior to AER, he spent two years as a National Research Council Fellow at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies after two years as a research scientist at MIT’s Parsons Laboratory. Cohen received his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from Columbia University in 1994 and has since focused on conducting numerical...
Thomas Connor, CFA, Staff Scientist
Mr. Connor, CFA, is a staff scientist and group manager for Sensor Applications and Modeling. With a background combining weather and finance, Mr. Connor has acquired a unique quantitative skill set that he applies to analyzing the impacts of weather on business and investment-related decisions. He has worked on a wide variety of projects at AER ranging from Army Core of Engineers funded...
Robert d'Entremont, PhD, Staff Scientist
Dr. d’Entremont has 34 years experience in atmospheric remote sensing, with interests in automated and subjective meteorological satellite data interpretation and display algorithms, and with emphasis on radiative and microphysical cloud-property retrievals. He has helped design satellite and ground-based retrievals of cloud radiative and microphysical properties that run in real time...
Janusz Eluszkiewicz, Ph.D., Senior Staff Scientist and Lead of Atmospheric Composition and Planetary Atmospheres
Dr. Eluszkiewicz holds a MSc in Physics from Warsaw University and a PhD in Planetary science from Caltech, and has acquired additional educational and professional experience at other leading institutions, including Oxford University and MIT. Dr. Eluszkiewicz is an interdisciplinary scientist with numerous publications in scientific journals and books. His research interests include...
Jason C. Furtado, Ph.D., Staff Scientist
Dr. Furtado’s principal areas of research involve large-scale atmospheric and climate dynamics, climate model validation, and ocean-atmosphere coupling. He has published papers on tropical and North Pacific decadal variability and extratropical stratosphere-troposphere coupling. Dr. Furtado works on the AER eCastTM forecasting team, providing medium- and long-range weather...
James Martin Griffin, Staff Scientist
Mr. Griffin serves as a subject matter expert on how the upper atmosphere and space environment impacts remote sensing systems and space object surveillance technology. He has provided analytical, computational, programming, project proposal and product development, data processing and visualization support for the space research efforts at both AER and the Air Force Research Laboratory (...
John M. Henderson, CCM, Staff Scientist
Mr. Henderson focuses on numerical weather prediction (NWP), data assimilation and applications to operational forecasting. He is Principal Investigator on an EPA-funded study to evaluate the suitability of long-term NWP simulations for use in air quality studies. He uses NASA supercomputers to carry out vast numbers of Atmospheric Transport and Dispersion (ADT) model simulations to support...
Ross Hoffman, Ph.D., Chief Scientist and Vice President, Research and Development
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...
Nicole Homeier, Ph.D., Staff Scientist, Remote Sensing
Dr. Homeier is a Senior Staff Scientist at AER. She is an expert on the space weather threat to the electric power grid and has led the development of tools focused on understanding this risk. Dr. Homeier has an extensive background in modeling, statistics, predictive analytics, machine-learning, and scientific programming.
Dr. Homeier received her Ph.D. in Astronomy from the...
Michael J. Iacono, Senior Staff Scientist, Modeling and Data Assimilation
Since joining AER in 1987, Mr. Iacono has contributed to research in atmospheric radiative transfer and on weather and climate model evaluation and improvement. He leads the development of the accurate and efficient longwave and shortwave radiation model, RRTMG, and he is currently studying its impact on simulations with the WRF weather research and forecasting model. As a member of the DOE...
S. Mark Leidner, Staff Scientist, Research and Development
Mark Leidner has over fifteen years experience in atmospheric modeling and 18 years in scientific
research and development. Mr. Leidner has been the lead scientist on AER’s ensemble forecast (eCast)
service since its conception in 2001. Currently he is the business and science lead with the University
of Oklahoma at an AER branch office in Norman, Oklahoma. He has...
Alan E. Lipton, Ph.D., Principal Scientist
Dr. Lipton has done a broad range of work satellite remote sensing, including applications in the infrared, microwave, and visible spectra. His research topics have included retrieval techniques for properties of the Earth surface and atmosphere, including cloud and surface characteristics. In addition, he has developed methods for assimilation of satellite sounder and imager data in...
Steve Lowe, Senior Engineer and Vice President, Modeling and Simulation
Steven J. Lowe has been actively engaged in the Department of Defense Modeling and Simulation community for over 15 years, pursuing the objective of including realistic environment representation in military applications. He has led the development of enabling technology and supported major simulation programs for all service branches, currently as the Principal Investigator for the...
Eli J. Mlawer, Ph.D., Senior Scientist and Leader of Atmospheric Composition and Radiation
Dr. Mlawer’s main areas of interest include atmospheric radiative transfer, climate study and the characterization of molecular collisional broadening. As part of his involvement in the DoE Atmospheric System Research (ASR) Program, Dr. Mlawer is the leader of the Broadband Heating Rate Profile project, an effort to compute fluxes and heating rates in clear and cloudy conditions at the...
George D. Modica, CCM, Senior Staff Scientist
George Modica has a MS degree in meteorology with an emphasis in numerical weather prediction (NWP). Since joining AER in 1998, he has participated in and/or managed a broad range of projects in variational data assimilation, atmospheric characterization studies of the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, the GOES/POES national weather satellite programs, renewable energy (wind and...
Jean-Luc Moncet, Principal Scientist
Since joining AER, Mr. Moncet 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...
Robert A. Morris, Principal Scientist and Vice President, Space Weather
Dr. Robert Morris leads AER's research, operations, and support in the areas of space environment and space weather. The initiatives include space physics research, space weather specification and forecasting, development of decision aids for government and commercial customers, and support of government space weather R&D and operations. Dr. Morris has over 24 years of government...
Thomas Nehrkorn, Ph.D., Senior Staff Scientist, Director of Tropical Forecasting and Manager of Modeling and Data Assimilation
Dr. Nehrkorn has been with Atmospheric and Environmental Research since 1985. He received his Ph.D. in Meteorology from MIT with Kerry Emmanuel as his thesis advisor. Prior to that, Dr. Nehrkorn studied and received his M.S. in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University under William Cotton, and his B.S. in Meteorology from The University of Hamburg, Germany.
Dr. Nehrkorn...
Rui Ponte, Ph.D., Principal Scientist and Leader of Atmosphere, Ocean and Climate
Dr. Ponte’s broad and multidisciplinary research interests have led him to study, among other topics: the dynamics and forcing of sea level variability and change; the general circulation of the ocean and atmosphere, using the angular momentum approach; the effects of the ocean on the Earth’s rotation and gravity field; the high-frequency oceanic response to atmospheric forcing;...
Katherine J. Quinn, Ph.D., Staff Scientist
Dr. Quinn's research interests include atmosphere, ocean, and solid Earth interactions and how climate related variations can influence geodetic parameters such as Earth rotation and orientation and time-variable gravity. At AER Dr. Quinn has developed algorithms for the Conical-Scanning Microwave Imager/Sounder (CMIS). She is currently studying the time variable gravity field of the...
Richard A. Quinn , Ph.D., Senior Staff Scientist and Group Manager, Space Plasmas and Interactions
Dr. Quinn has developed, validated and delivered research and production grade scientific software in support of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) geospace research, while working closely with AFRL to identify critical requirements, and extend knowledge of the near-Earth plasma environment both as a team member and team leader. He also manages the development of AER's Space...
William Ramstrom, Senior Staff Scientist
Mr. Ramstrom focuses on hurricane forecasting, radar processing, and numerical weather prediction. He has extensive experience with WRF model simulations and radar data assimilation methods. In a previous position, he served as an operational weather forecaster for several major airlines.
He has a BS in Computer Science, and an MS in Atmospheric Science, both from MIT. His thesis...
Joy Rohde, Director of Market Strategy
Joy provides thought leadership in the area of weather and climate analytics to Insurance, Energy and other industries, and she helps to translate weather-related customer needs into cutting edge practical solutions that provide insight into future and past weather-related events. Joy has a BS from the University of Cincinnati and an MA from the University of Colorado.
David Salstein, Ph.D., Visiting Scientist
Dr. Salstein received his Ph.D. in Meteorology from M.I.T. In his research at AER, he has focused on diagnostic studies of atmospheric and oceanic circulation. He is well known for his contributions to the study of the exchange of angular momentum between atmosphere and solid Earth, and as such, is an active participant of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Frames Service, having...
Arindam Samanta, Ph.D., Staff Scientist
Working closely with customers, Dr. Samanta contributes to numerous innovations in products, services and scientific research. Arindam manages Verisk’s wildfire risk management product for the insurance industry, FireLineTM. He is intimately involved in developing and managing new products and services: AER RespondTM (tornado, and wildfire monitoring service), AER...
Hilary E. "Ned" Snell, Ph.D., Principal Scientist and Vice President, GOES-R
Dr. Snell joined AER in 1994 as a Senior Research Associate. In 1999, he took on leadership of what is now the Infrared and Trace Gas Remote Sensing Group. Prior to joining AER, Dr. Snell studied and received a PhD in Atmospheric and Space Sciences from the University of Michigan and an AB in Geophysics from the University of Chicago. Dr. Snell is experienced in all aspects of both...
Lisa H. Wei, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate
Dr. Wei's research interests include the risk of coronal mass ejections to the power grid, remote sensing of seasonal inundation on the Earth's surface, and millimeter-wave observations of molecular gas in star-forming galaxies. Before joining AER in 2012, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow for the Submillimeter Array at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, studying the...
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