As environmental data stewards for the nation, NCEI requires a workforce with diverse skills. We’re pleased that our work earned recognition in 2016. A group of our best and brightest earned kudos as NOAA Team Members of the Month. We’re proud to showcase the members of our talented staff who earned this honor (listed in alphabetical order).
NOAA Team Members of 2016
Barbara Ambrose—NCEI Graphic Artist
As a member of NCEI’s visual communications team, Barbara brings a wealth of expertise to every design project, from a new system logo to a sweeping layout of an annual program report. Since she started at NOAA in 2002, Barbara’s reputation for excellence has spread across the organization, and she is regularly called upon to help offices throughout NESDIS, other line offices, and NOAA headquarters.
Barbara recently received official recognition from NCEI’s Center for Coasts, Oceans and Geophysics praising her for designing the Gulf of Mexico Regional Coordination Team’s new visual display. NCEI officials credit Barbara with superior skills at conveying complex scientific information through well-designed visual representations.
Dr. Imke Durre—Physical Scientist for NCEI’s Center for Weather and Climate
Imke recently deployed Version 2 of the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive, a large-scale meticulous project. Imke diligently documented hundreds of pages of pertinent information to ensure the highest standard of data history and reproducibility.
This foundational NOAA database is used for international climate change assessments, air pollution models, and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre's radiosonde temperature dataset. In addition, Imke stepped up so that NOAA had a significant local presence in the 100-year commemoration of the Great Asheville Flood of July 1916, developing NOAA materials and participating in event planning on the local level. She has also continued a long-time commitment to promote the advancement of women, minority, and disabled scientists. Her dedication to NOAA, her field, and the nation continues to grow.
Susan Osborne—NCEI Communications Consultant and Technical Writer
Susan’s work in communications has improved NCEI’s ability across many outlets to inform the public about science and the work of many researchers. Leading the organization’s efforts in social media and web story content, Susan combines a background in science and communications to present complex science topics to the public in understandable ways. Her efforts also entertain and engage readers of all ages. Since NCEI’s formation in early 2015, Susan has been instrumental in using social media to help brand the organization and its vast stores of data. Her goal is to expose a wide audience to the federal treasure of climate, historical weather, oceans, coasts, and geophysical data.
Brendan Reser—Lead Operational Data Manager Aboard the Okeanos Explorer
The NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer benefits from the expertise of Brendan, a key team member who stewards video and other scientific data collected aboard Okeanos. Brendan helps fulfill customer requests for these data, including one recent request from Discovery Canada that resulted in video from the ship airing on the show. Okeanos is renowned for recording creatures and environments where no instruments have gone before—from the canyons of the Northeast Atlantic to the waters of Indonesia.
One of his key accomplishments is creating a way to send video off the ship by the end of a cruise rather than at the end of a field season. Brendan's efforts minimized possible data loss before its safekeeping in the NOAA Archives. He also helped to complete the archiving of over 75 terabytes of video data collected aboard the Okeanos during its 2010–2015 cruises, a massive effort spanning well over a year and a half. Video has historically been one of the most complicated data types for NOAA to curate, archive, and make publicly accessible.
