D
Committee and Staff Biographical Sketches
COMMITTEE
Jacqueline Richter-Menge (Cochair) is a research civil engineer at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL). Ms. Richter-Menge has focused her research activities on developing a more comprehensive and quantitative understanding of the Arctic sea ice cover, addressing both dynamic and thermodynamic processes. She is a lead investigator in the National Science Foundation Arctic Observing Network program and, with additional support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office, directs the activities of a multiagency team establishing a network of autonomous in situ sea ice mass balance observatories. She is a coordinating editor for the Web-based Arctic Report Card for the NOAA Climate Program Office, chairs the U.S. Submarine Arctic Science Program (SCICEX) Science Advisory Committee, and is the sea ice science team lead for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Operation Ice Bridge Project. In association with her research, Ms. Richter-Menge has gained significant first-hand Arctic experience leading or participating in more than 15 field programs. She actively participates in a wide range of outreach activities, including the coordination of the Adopt-A-Buoy project aimed at middle school science students. Ms. Richter-Menge graduated with a Master of Civil Engineering from the University of Delaware and has been with CRREL since 1981.
John Walsh (Cochair) is a President’s Professor of Global Climate Change at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF). He is also the director of the NOAA/UAF Cooperative Institute for Alaska Research and of the Center for Global Change. His primary research interests are Arctic climate change over the decade-to-century timescale; predictability of climate change in high latitudes, sea ice variations; and extreme weather events in the context of climate change. He was the lead author for the cryosphere chapter of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (2005) and a lead author for the Polar Regions chapter of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007). He is a coordinating lead author for the 2013 National Assessment Report being produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Prior to his position at the University of Alaska, Walsh spent 30 years on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana. He is the coauthor of an undergraduate textbook on severe and hazardous weather. He earned his Ph.D. in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974 and his B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1970.
Lawson Brigham is Distinguished Professor of Geography & Arctic Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and a senior fellow at the Institute of the North in Anchorage. During 2005-2009 he was chair of the Arctic Council’s Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment and vice chair of the council’s working group on Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment. Dr. Brigham was a career U.S. Coast Guard officer, serving from 1970 to 1995 and retiring
with the rank of Captain. He served at sea in command of four Coast Guard cutters including a patrol boat, Great Lakes icebreaker, offshore law enforcement cutter, and the polar icebreaker Polar Sea sailing in Alaskan, Arctic, and Antarctic waters; he also served as chief of strategic planning in Washington, D.C. Dr. Brigham has been a research fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a faculty member of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School, and deputy director of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. He is a graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy (B.S.), a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Naval War College, and holds graduate degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (M.S.) and the University of Cambridge (M.Phil. and Ph.D.). His research interests include Arctic marine transportation, remote sensing of sea ice, Arctic climate change, and polar marine policy.
Jennifer A. Francis is a research professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and the Graduate Program in Atmospheric Sciences at Rutgers University. She studies the Arctic climate system, causes for rapid change, and linkages between the Arctic and the global climate system. Her work is funded primarily by the National Science Foundation. She has served on several national committees in the National Science Foundation, the American Meteorological Society, and the science steering committee for the Study of Arctic Environmental Change (SEARCH). Dr. Francis received her Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Washington in 1994. Dr. Francis is currently a member of the Polar Research Board.
Marika Holland is a an ice specialist in the Oceanography section of the Climate and Global Dynamics division at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). She received her Ph.D. in 1997 from the Program in Atmosphere and Ocean Sciences at the University of Colorado in the area of sea ice modeling for climate applications. Her training continued with a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, studying the influence of sea ice variability and change on the global ocean circulation and climate. In 1999, Dr. Holland moved to NCAR in Boulder, Colorado, as a postdoctoral fellow and joined the scientific staff in 2000. Her research interests include polar climate variability and future change, including the role of ice-ocean-atmosphere interactions and feedbacks. She has extensive experience using coupled climate models to study these issues and has been active in the development of improved sea ice models for climate simulations. She is currently serving as chief scientist for the Community Earth System Modeling Project.
Son V. Nghiem is the Science Applications Development lead of the Radar Science and Engineering Section, and the Hydrology Discipline program manager of the Hydrology Office in the Earth Science and Technology Directorate at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology. His research encompasses active and passive remote sensing, advanced satellite radars and radiometers, electromagnetic scattering and emission, and earth sciences and applications. He has published 70 peer-reviewed articles and over 230 conference articles. He received the 1999 Lew Allen Award for Excellence in recognition of his pioneering research in the areas of polarimetric scatterometry for earth science remote sensing and contributions to future advanced satellite instrument concepts; the 2006 NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for developing scientific applications of scatterometry in land, ice, and snow processes;
the 2008 NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for his contributions to understanding the melt state of Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets, its significance in earth science missions, and its implications in climate change; and the 2010 NASA Exceptional Technology Achievement Medal for his contributions in developing a new technology using NASA satellite scatterometer data to measure high-resolution global wind for offshore wind energy development. His research results were reported worldwide by major news networks and many radio stations. Dr. Nghiem received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991.
Robert Raye is the Ice and Metocean Project lead for Shell Projects and Technology in the U.S. Arctic. In this role, Mr. Raye is responsible for providing support to field activities and design engineering to ensure safe and efficient operations. He has a key role in delivery of Shell’s Arctic physical science program, which includes collection of field measurements, characterization and research studies, and collaborative programs with industry partners, academia, and governmental agencies. Mr. Raye has established a field observation program in Alaska that includes a network of instrumented buoys, coastal meteorological stations, and vessel-based observers that report near-real-time data used to validate models and forecasts. Recently, he has been instrumental in developing collaborative agreements with NOAA offices to share data and resources, with the goal of improving overall weather and ice forecasting in Alaska and improving hurricane intensity forecasting in the Gulf of Mexico. He serves on the Data Management and Communications Committee in the Gulf Coast Ocean Observing System, where he supports initiatives promoting data interoperability, metadata standards, and Web services for data products and has applied these concepts in Shell internal data management and dissemination systems. Mr. Raye is Shell’s subject matter expert for oceanographic surveys and is skilled in environmental instrumentation, data analyses, and data management. Mr. Raye holds a Master of Science degree in ocean engineering from Florida Atlantic University.
Rebecca Woodgate1 is a principal oceanographer and associate professor at the Applied Physics Laboratory and the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington. She is a physical oceanographer, specializing in polar research, with special focus on the circulation of the Arctic Ocean, interactions between sea ice and the ocean, and the role of the polar oceans in climate. Her research concentrates on the collection and analysis of in situ oceanographic data. She has worked for many years in the deployment and recovery of moored oceanographic instrumentation in ice-covered waters, and the analysis of both mooring and hydrographic data. She is involved in undergraduate teaching and graduate education. She has worked on British, German, Norwegian, and American research vessels and led expeditions to the Bering Strait and the Arctic Ocean. Her first degree is in physics from the University of Cambridge and her Ph.D. (University of Oxford) is in data assimilation in ocean models. Her postdoctoral work was done at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. Dr. Woodgate's research goal is to understand the physical processes in both Arctic and Antarctic regions, and to use her background to bridge the gap between theory, modeling, and real observations of the oceans.
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1 Member through June 2012
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL STAFF
Ms. Katie Thomas is an associate program officer for the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (BASC). She received her B.S. from the University of Michigan in 2004 and her M.S. in environmental science and policy from Johns Hopkins University in 2009. Since joining the National Research Council in 2006, she has worked on studies related to urban meteorology, climate modeling, weather radar, and advancing climate science.
Ms. Lauren Brown is a research associate with the Polar Research Board and the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate at the National Academies, where she has been involved in a number of National Research Council studies such as America’s Climate Choices, Lessons and Legacies of International Polar Year 2007-2008, and Future Science Opportunities in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. She holds an M.S. in marine studies with a focus on physical ocean science and engineering and a B.A. in physics and astronomy from the University of Delaware. She is especially interested in high-latitude environmental policy issues and the role of polar regions in global climate change.
Ms. Amanda Purcell is a research associate with the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (BASC). She began working with BASC as a program assistant in 2008 and has since worked on various projects including America’s Climate Choices, Frontiers in Understanding Climate Change and Polar Ecosystems, and Future Science Opportunities in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. Amanda received her bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from American University in 2008. She is also currently pursuing a master’s in mathematics from American University, anticipated in 2013.
Dr. Alexandra Jahn is a project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Her research interests are in Arctic sea ice and freshwater dynamics, climate modeling, ocean tracers, and paleoclimate. Alexandra received her Ph.D. in atmospheric and oceanic sciences from McGill University in 2010, for her research on Arctic Ocean freshwater dynamics. After a 2-year postdoctoral appointment in the Advanced Study Program at NCAR, Alexandra was a Christine Mirzayan Science Policy Fellow with the National Research Council’s Polar Research Board in early 2012, before returning to NCAR for her current appointment.
Ms. Elizabeth Finkelman is a senior program assistant for the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (BASC). She received her Bachelor of Arts and Science degree from McGill University in 2010, concentrating in molecular biology and political science. Since joining the National Research Council in March 2011, she has participated in board-related projects and studies concerning climate change, urban meteorology, climate modeling, and urban forestry.
