PCAR Team : Paros Center for Atmospheric Research : UMass Amherst

Leadership

Brenda Philips

Paros Research Professor &

Co-Director, Paros Center for Atmospheric Research

My research focuses on hazardous weather weather warning systems and creating better linkages among the meteorological, technical, and human dimensions.

Mike Zink

Paros Professor of Geophysical Sensing

Co-Director, Paros Center for Atmospheric Research

I'm the Paros Professor of Geophysical Sensing Systems in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where I serve as the Co-Director of the Paros Center for Atmospheric Research.

Faculty

Rob DeConto

Provost Professor
Director, School of Earth & Sustainability

Rob DeConto is a Provost Professor of Climate Science and Director of the School of Earth & Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Rob’s background spans Earth science, climate physics, and glaciology. His research on climate change, the dynamic behavior of glaciers and ice sheets, and the impacts of sea level rise on coastlines and people has been featured in Rolling Stone, on the cover of Nature, and the front page of the New York Times. Rob is a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and a recipient of the Tinker-Muse Prize for Science and Policy in Antarctica. Rob is co-lead of the Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) international project office of the World Climate Research Programme and he is leading a regional effort to establish a Northeast Center for Coastal Resilience. Rob serves on a number of national and international science boards and advisory panels.

Stephen Frasier

Professor, Co-Director Microwave Remote Sensing Lab

Stephen Frasier is a Professor and Co-Director of MIRSL. He received the B.E.E. degree in 1987 from the University of Delaware, Newark and the Ph.D. degree in 1994 from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research interests include microwave imaging and interferometric techniques, and applications in oceanography and meteorology. Since 1994, he has been employed by the University of Massachusetts as a Research Engineer, Senior Research Fellow, and as a faculty member. Dr. Frasier is a Senior Member of the IEEE Geoscience & Remote Sensing Society and a member of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) Commission F, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society.

Hui Guan

Assistant Professor, Manning College of information and Computer Science

Guan's research lies in the intersection of machine learning and programming systems. Her current research focuses on improving machine learning (e.g., speed, scalability, reliability) through innovations in algorithms and programming systems (e.g., compilers, runtime). She is also interested in leveraging machine learning to improve high-performance computing.

Dave McLaughlin

Professor

Education

Paul Siqueira

Professor, Co-Director Microwave Remote Sensing Lab, Adjunct Professor, Department of Earth, Geographic and Climate Sciences

Paul Siqueira is a Professor and Co-Director of MIRSL. He received the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan's Radiation Laboratory in Ann Arbor, and a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. Prior to arriving at the University of Massachusetts, Professor Siqueira worked in the Radar Science and Engineering Section at the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, run by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. Prof. Siqueira's research interests are in radar interferometry, polarimetry, micro- and millimeter-wave instrument development, and remote sensing science for terrestrial applications.

Qian Yu

Associate Professor in GIS and Remote Sensing

HongKun Zhang

Professor, Math and Statistics, College of Natural Sciences

Prof. Zhang’s research focuses on machine learning of dynamical systems, deep learning of graph neural networks, and signal processing on networks via graph wavelet transforms.

PCAR Staff

David Westbrook

Senior Research Fellow

Many years ago Westy got his bachelor's degree from from the State University of New York at Oswego where he was lucky enough to be advised by the wonderful Doug Lea. Doug convinced Westy that graduate school would be an awesome place and because of that Westy has had the pleasure of working with many amazing people over the years. Westy obtained his Masters degree at UMass with Vic Lesser in the Multi-Agent Systems Lab and worked with Victor (MAS), Paul Cohen (EKSL) and Jim Kurose (CASA) among many others on what seems like hundreds of interesting projects.

David Pepyne

Senior Research Engineer

Dr. Dave Pepyne's research focuses on the application of infrasound measurements to detect and analyze atmospheric phenomena.

Allison Reding

Administrative Assistant for PCAR.

PCAR Students

Hakan Saplakoglu

Master's Student

Hakan is a Master's Student whose research focuses on infrasound detection created by airplane wake vortices.

Tristan Liang

Alumnus Undergraduate Student Researcher

Tristan's research focuses on the analysis of infrasound data. With Tristan's aid, we were also possible to install a sensor in the center of Taiwan with the goal to detect earthquakes.

Chengzghi Wu Li

Undergraduate Student Researcher

Chengzhi's research focuses on the creation of reliable and cost-efficient sensor nodes for infrasound sensing. He also investigates different physical filters with the goal to filter wind noise.

Zachary Clayton

Undergraduate Student Researcher

Zachary's research focuses on the fusion of weather data with infrasound data.

Ruichen Wang

Alumnus Undergraduate Student Researcher

Ruichen is a Geographic Information Systems student who examined spatial and temporal correlations between CASA radar data and high resolution temperature and pressure measurements.

Zhe Xu

Ph.D. Student

Aleksei

Master's Student

Aleksei Rutkovskii is a Master's student specializing in the training of machine learning-based nowcasting, with an emphasis on using X-band radar datasets for training.