Education and Outreach
1. Summer Engineering Internships within ATD
For the last three years, ATD has been developing a small-scale summer internship program for undergraduates in electrical and mechanical engineering. These internships are targeted towards undergraduate students from small community colleges, introducing them to various
engineering aspects of
developing, improving and deploying atmospheric observing systems.
The project started in FY2000 with one undergraduate student from
Western Wyoming Community College (WWCC) and has since expanded to
five students who are mentored by three of ATD's lead engineers. In
FY02, Eric Debenham from the University of Wyoming, Florence Manega
and Cody Rucker, both from the University of Colorado, Luke Swartwood
from the University of South Florida and Tim Lowry from Western
Wyoming Community College spent half of their summer participating in
the International H2O Project operating the MGLASS and TAOS systems in
Oklahoma and Kansas. The second half was spent in Boulder, working
with ATD staff on various electrical and mechanical engineering
challenges. ATD considers this program a large success and several of
the students have come back for a second year. Ned Chamberlain and
Brigitte Baeuerle are responsible for setting up and running the
program; Jack Fox, Terry Hock and Ned Chamberlain served as mentoring
engineers in FY02. In FY03, the program will be expanded once again by
placing one of the internships at ATD's Research Aviation Facility to
also provide exposure to various aspects of aerospace engineering.
2. IHOP Student Participation
In addition to the five engineering students, several other undergraduate and graduate students were heavily involved in the IHOP field project. Emily Wheeler, a meteorology student from the University of Oklahoma, served as the dropsonde operator on the Flight International Inc. Lear Jet for the duration of the project. Dropsonde operations were plagued by unexpected problems at the beginning of the project, when most of the sondes did not provide any wind measurements Emily worked closely with the flight crew, the ATD dropsonde engineers and technician and a German scientist to determine and solve the source of the problem. Bob Conzemius, also an OU student, worked in the IHOP Operations Center as the status coordinator for all ground-based and airborne systems. For the entire six weeks, Bob kept track of every single mobile and fixed research platform that collected data during IHOP. Neil Fox from the University of Missouri - Columbia and four of his students were stationed at Liberal, KS for three weeks and helped with MGLASS, XPOL and TAOS operations.
3. Reno Basin II Field Project
ATD deployed one fixed Integrated Sounding System in Nevada for the
Reno Basin Inversion and Educational Study in February and March
2002. Reno Basin 2002 investigated air flow and stability in Nevada in
conjunction with a course in atmospheric measurements taught by John
Hallett at the University of Nevada, Reno. The project provided in
depth training for graduate students in the use of ISS instruments,
data collection, and data analysis. The course included lectures on
the theory and practice of meteorological measurements including
instrument design, construction, deployment, and operation. Dr. Steve
Cohn, a scientist within ATD was heavily involved in Reno Basin. He
gave several lectures and demonstrated how to operate and use the ISS.
Steve also worked closely with several of the Reno Basin students,
helping them with their individual projects. Cohn together with
Dr. William Brown were nominated in FY02 for UCAR's Outstanding
Accomplishment Award for Education based on their contribution to Reno
Basin II but also for their extensive teaching and experimental
interactions with the university community in Reno Basin I, PROPHET I
and II and several other educational projects within the last five
years. The award is given annually for efforts that have a
significant impact on, and lead to, improvements in scientific,
mathematics, or technical education, or other efforts that
significantly enhance the Public's understanding of scientific of
technical issues.
4. Instrument Development and Education in Airborne Science (IDEAS)
IDEAS was a RAF-led effort that combines improving instrumentation for
future NSF airborne research while exposing students from various
universities to airborne research on the NSF/NCAR C-130. The program
consisted of two phases, one in April and one in October 2002 with a
total of 40 flight hours divided between the two periods. Students
were required to select a mentor from among the participating
scientists and then joined the flight crew operating instrumentation
and data systems after suitable instruction by NCAR scientists and
technicians. Flights originated from the RAF facility at the Jefferson
County airport in Broomfield, CO.
5. Student Visits
In the field, tens to hundreds of people, from elementary students to
adults, visit ATD systems. S-POL, at the end of a long gravel road in
the middle of empty western Oklahoma, had students and other informal
visitors nearly every day during IHOP. In several other field programs, ATD
staff have taken active and much appreciated roles in both classroom
and hands-on undergraduate and graduate education.
The ISPA2002 experiment included interaction with students from
Colorado State University. This interaction included demonstrations
of ISS equipment, exchange of data, and discussion of observations.
When not in the field, ATD continues to support education by giving
mobile GLASS demonstrations throughout the year on a non-interference
basis. Additionally ATD participated in larger UCAR sponsored events
such as Super Science Saturday and other open houses.ATD contributed to UCAR's summer student leadership program and hosted a visit by 20 students from Augustana College with majors in geology, geography and general environmental sciences. The ATD-led successful NSF Biocomplexity proposal for an isotope-resolving CO2 instrument had an explicit and well-reviewed education component developed in partnership with UCAR E&O. The joint ATD-ACD Analytical Photonics and Optoelectronics Laboratory (APOL) that evolved from Biocomplexity and NCAR opportunity funding has a visitor program and a walk-through display capability as part of its plans and implementation.
6. Postdocs and Graduate Students at ATD
ATD plays a strong role in traditional graduate student education. Graduate students participate in all programs that use ATD systems, often developing their research and leadership skills by serving as mission coordinators, flight scientists, daily operations managers, etc. Graduate students involved in field projects and many others are not directly involved use ATD data sets in their research and Theses.In FY 2002, ATD hosted five ASP postdocs: Sabine Goeke from ETH Switzerland worked with ATD scientists on understanding microphysical processes, specifically the evolution of hydrometerors in orographic precipitation. She used data collected in fall 1999 during the field phase of the Mesoscale Alpine Program to analyze and evaluate possibilities and limitations of polarimetric classification schemes detecting aggregation and riming of ice particles.Shane Mayor from the University of Wisconsin began development of an eye-safe aerosol backscatter lidar in FY02. The objective is to build a vertically pointing laboratory prototype that can transmit and detect light at 1.54 microns. Paul Harasti from the University of Toronto worked with ATD scientists to apply Sir Horace Lamb's solution for a small amplitude disturbance superimposed upon a Rankine-combined vortex to the Ground-Based Velocity Track Display (GBVTD) method. The resulting new GBVTD formulation was successfully tested on the elliptical Typhoon Herb (1996). Tian-You Yu from the University of Nebraska worked with Dr Bill Brown and Dr Steve Cohn on advanced signal processing techniques for wind profilers. He specializes in interferometry techniques, for example, the RIM (Range IMaging) technique that enables a significant improvements in profiler range resolution. Amanda Cox from the University of Colorado has been funded by ATD to work on the AIMR instrument.
ATD also sponsored Fleur Couvreux, a graduate student from CNRS France, who did an observational study of convection initiation along boundaries using operational data obtained from satellite imagery, WSR-88D radar, AERI, surface stations and Raman Lidar.