Community Advisory Committee for Water Prediction Membership
Matt Ables
Chief Executive Officer for the North American subsidiary
KISTERS
Matt.Ables at kisters.net
Matt Ables is the Chief Executive Officer for the North American subsidiary of KISTERS. Founded in 1965, KISTERS has been creating hydrological, meteorological, and environmental data management software since 1985. Mr. Ables began his career in 2000 as a Hydrologist with the Lower Colorado River Authority in Austin, Texas, where he helped maintain stream gauges and was responsible for the KISTERS hydrological database and software. In 2008 he joined KISTERS in Sacramento, California as Project Manager and Consulting Hydrologist. He was responsible for designing and implementing hydrological data management systems across the U.S. and Canada. Now as CEO, he manages day-to-day operations and oversees larger projects including software deployment at several state and provincial agencies, hydropower operations, municipalities, and water districts. Mr. Ables has 18 years of experience in hydrological data management, a Bachelor of Science in Geology from Baylor University and a Master of Science in Geography from Texas State University. He is a registered Professional Geoscientist in the State of Texas.
Jerad Bales (ex officio)
Executive Director
Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI)
jdbales at cuahsi.org
Dr. Bales is the Executive Director of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc (CUAHSI). CUAHSI, located in Cambridge, MA, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization representing more than 130 U.S. universities and international water science-related organizations. CUAHSI develops infrastructure and services for the advancement of water science in the United States and internationally, supporting the broad multi-disciplinary science community. CUAHSI partners with numerous federal agencies, including primarily, the National Science Foundation, as well as donor organizations. Prior to his position with CUAHSI, Dr. Bales was the U.S. Geological Survey's Chief Scientist for Water. In this position, he was the Senior Executive responsible for $100M of activities related to the planning and development of national hydrologic research and technology transfer. Dr. Bales has conducted research on water resources, hazards, and water quality issues throughout the U.S. and internationally, and has publishsed more than 120 articles and technical reports on this work. Dr. Bales has served on many interagency committees, including as Co-Chair of OSTP's Subcommittee on Water Availability and Quality, and as Chair of the U.S. National Committee for the UNESCO International Hydrological Programme. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering/Water Resources from the University of Texas.
Ana P. Barros
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Duke University, Pratt School of Engineering
barros at duke.edu
Dr. Ana P. Barros is the Edmund T. Pratt Jr. School Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University, and a Professor of Earth and Ocean Sciences faculty of the Nicholas School of the Environment. Dr. Barros research is on multiscale water cycle processes with a special focus on hydrometeorology and hydrology of mountainous regions. Her research approach relies strongly on observational process studies using remote sensing and ground based observations, coupled modeling across the atmosphere and terrestrial continuum, and integration of models and observations. Dr. Barros has served and continues to serve in numerous committees and boards of various federal agencies, the NRC, and various professional and scientific societies. She is President-elect of AGU's Hydrology Section and Chair of the Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences Section of AAAS. Dr. Barros is a Fellow of the AAAS, AGU, AMS, and ASCE, and a member of the NAE.
Levi Brekke
Program Manager, Research and Development
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
lbrekke at usbr.gov
Dr. Brekke serves as the Program Manager for the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), Research & Development (R&D) Office. Reclamation is the largest wholesaler of water in the country and the second largest producer of hydroelectric power. Dr. Brekke oversees Reclamation's Science and Technology, Desalination and Water Purification, Open Water Data, and Technology Transfer programs, which collectively address Reclamation technical challenges in water infrastructure, power and energy, environmental issues in water delivery management, water operations and planning, and developing water supplies. These programs address challenges by investing in Reclamation-led research, external research financial assistance, prize competitions, and technology transfer partnerships with industry to accelerate the commercialization of solutions to the marketplace. Prior to his current duties, he served as R&D’s Water and Climate Research Coordinator, facilitating research related to water management under long-term climate change and short-term climate variability, as well as capacity building through tools development and training. His work experience also includes water resources planning and reservoir systems modeling at Reclamation’s Technical Service Center and California-Great Basin offices, and consulting in the areas of water and wastewater treatment. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of California.
Patrick Burke
Chief - Oceanographic Division
Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS)
National Ocean Service (NOS)
pat.burke at noaa.gov
Patrick Burke is the Chief of the Oceanogaphic Division for the NOS Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS). CO-OPS is the authoritative source for accurate, reliable, and timely water levels, current, and other oceanographic and meteorological information along the U.S. coasts and Great Lakes needed to support safe and efficient maritime commerce. He oversees operational aspects of NOS' coastal modeling program, and works closely with the NOAA Office of Water Prediction's (OWP) National Water Center (NWC) to investigate freshwater-estuary-ocean modeling coupling approaches to support navigation and water quality applications. He has over 15 years of experience in physical oceanography, coastal modeling, and opertions management. Patrick received his B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Rutgers University and his M.S. in Ocean Engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology.
Don Cline
Associate Director for Water Resources
United States Geological Survey (USGS)
dcline at usgs.gov
Dr. Don Cline is the U.S. Geological Survey’s Associate Director for Water Resources. Don leads the USGS’ research, monitoring, assessment, modeling, and prediction of the nation’s water resources. The USGS Water Resources Mission Area (WMA) provides society with the information it needs on water quantity and quality across the Nation. Don oversees the WMA’s efforts to advance understanding of the controls over water availability; to better predict changes in water quantity and quality in response to natural and human-induced changes; to anticipate and respond to water-related emergencies and conflicts; and to deliver timely water data, analyses, and decision-support tools seamlessly across the Nation to support water-resource decisions.
Don joined USGS in 2016 following a 19-year career with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service, where he served as the Director of the National Water Center, the Chief of the Hydrology Laboratory, and the Director of the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center. He has been in the Senior Executive Service since 2010.
Don has over 20 years of research, development, and operational implementation experience in applied and basic hydrologic and cryospheric science, large-scale field experiments, integrated environmental modeling, development and application of airborne and spaceborne observing systems, and applications of geographic information systems. He holds a Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. from the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Efi Foufoula-Georgiou
Professor, Depts. of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth System Science
University of California, Irvine
efi at uci.edu
Efi Foufoula-Georgiou is a Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth System Science, and the Samueli Endowed Chair in Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Her area of research is hydrology and geomorphology, with special interest on scaling theories, multli-scale dynamics of precipitation and landforms, and the interaction of climate and the terrestrial environment. She has served on several advisorsy boards including the Water Science and Technology Board of the National Academies; NSF Advisory Council for Geosciences; NASA Earth Sciences Subcommittee; Board of Trustees of UCAR; chair of the Board of Directors for CUAHSI; and President of the Hydrology section of AGU. She is a fellow of AGU, AMS, AAAS, and an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Professor Foufoula-Georgiou received a diploma in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (1979), and an M.S. and Ph.D. (1985) in Environmental Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Curt Jawdy, PE
Innovation and Research
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
cmjawdy at tva.gov
Curt Jawdy is a licensed civil engineer and hydrologist currently advising TVA’s head of Innovation & Research. In this role, Curt is helping to craft TVA’s evolution in the rapidly changing energy marketplace. This transition to the Innovation & Research group grew out of his previous decade of work transforming the methods, models and software of TVA’s river management group. In that decade, Curt facilitated projects to completely modernize the river modeling and decision system, create a probabilistic flood modeling capability, create a dambreach life loss modeling capability, update evacuation maps, update TVA’s drought risk with dendrochronology and modeling, calibrate flood risk models with paleoflood sampling, fully close the water balance for the first time in TVA’s water supply planning group, move the probable maximum flood modeling for nuclear plants and dams to modern methods and generally move the agency forward technically.
Curt received an engineering B.S. from the Pennsylvania State University and M.S. from the University of Tennessee. He has had a great working partnership with NWS over the years and looks forward to the continuing growth of the National Water Center.
Steve Kopp
Senior Product Engineer
Esri Inc.
skopp at esri.com
Steve Kopp is a Senior Product Engineer and Science Liaison at Esri Inc, an international geographic information system (GIS) software and services company. For more than 30 years Mr. Kopp has been part of the Software Products division at Esri, engaged in design, development, and management of GIS software. His primary focus is spatial analytic tools and spatial modeling applications, with a focus on Earth science applications, especially water resources. This work has led to long-term collaborations with Federal agencies, academia, and partner companies, toward developing specialized software for hydrologic analysis. He is currently co-chair of the Technology Committee for the American Water Resources Association.
Michael Lowry
Strategic Planner
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
michael.lowry at fema.dhs.gov
Michael Lowry serves as a Strategic Planner and Emergency Management Specialist for FEMA Region IV of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He is responsible for longterm strategic direction and response planning. Lowry has 15 years of experience in research, forecasting, communications, and emergency management. Prior to joining FEMA, he served as a subject matter expert on hurricanes and tropical meteorology, most recently as visiting scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Hurricane Center (NHC), through its partnership with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). Previously, Lowry served as on-air hurricane specialist and tropical program lead for The Weather Channel (TWC) from 2012-2016. While at TWC, he provided network coverage for hurricanes and nor’easters, including Superstorm Sandy in 2012, the Boston blizzard in 2013, and Hurricane Matthew in 2016, filing reports for NBC Nightly News, TODAY, MSNBC, and CNBC. Lowry has also served as a lead scientist at the NHC in Miami, FL, where he was responsible for the development of new tropical cyclone-related products, including new watches and warnings, for the National Weather Service (NWS). Other positions have included Senior Scientist at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in Alexandria, Va., and emergency manager and meteorologist for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, where he provided support for nine presidentially declared disasters, including seven hurricane disaster declarations in 2004 and 2005. Lowry is the recipient of the 2013 National Hurricane Conference Outstanding Achievement Award in Meteorology. He holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in meteorology from Florida State University.
David R. Maidment
Department Chair, Civil Engineering
University of Texas at Austin
maidment at utexas.edu
David R. Maidment is a Professor Emeritus of the University of Texas, Austin, where he served on the civil engineering faculty from 1981 to 2019. In collaboration with the Consortium of Universities for Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI), he led the engagement of the academic community in the initial development of the National Water Model, and was the technical director of the first three Summer Institutes held at the National Water Center. He received his Bachelor's degree in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2016 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for development of geographic information systems applied to hydrologic processes.
Ehab Meselhe
Professor; Engineer
Tulane University
emeselhe at tulane.edu
Ehab Meselhe, Ph.D., P.E., is a Professor in the Department of River-Coastal Science and Engineering at Tulane University. Dr. Meselhe has more than 25 years of experience with development and applications of numerical models to rivers, watersheds, and coastal areas. Dr. Meselhe is a registered Professional Engineer in the states of Iowa and Louisiana.
Roy Rasmussen (ex officio)
Senior Scientist, Section Head
Hydrometeorology Applications Program (HAP) - Research Applications Laboratory (RAL)
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
rasmus at ucar.edu
Roy Rasmussen received a B.S. degree in Physics and Mathematics from Wheaton College, Illinois, in 1978, and Masters and Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in Atmospheric Sciences in 1980 and 1982, respectively, specializingn in cloud physics. After receiving his doctorate, he was an Advanced Study Program postdoctoral researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). He is currently a Senior Scientist and director of the Hydrometeorology Applications Program (HAP) at the Research Applications Laboratory (RAL) at NCAR. He is an American Meteorological Society (AMS) Fellow and ten patents and over 100 peer reviewed journal papers.
David Tarboton
Professor
Civil and Environmental Engineering, Utah Water Research Laboratory
Utah State University
david.tarboton at usu.edu
David Tarboton is Director of the Utah Water Research Laboratory and professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Utah State University. His research focuses on advancing the capability for hydrologic prediction by developing models that take advantage of new information and process understanding enabled by new technology. He is principal investigator for the National Science Foundation project for the development of HydroShare, a collaborative environment for sharing hydrologic data and models operated by the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI). He has developed a number of models and software packages including the TauDEM hydrologic terrain analysis and channel network extraction package and Utah Energy Balance snowmelt model. He has been on the faculty at USU for 30 years where he teaches Hydrology and Geographic Information Systems in Water Resources.
Dwane Young
Chief, Water Data Integration Branch, Office of Water
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Young.Dwane at epa.gov
Dwane has worked with EPA since 2005, and has worked on environmental data management systems in both the Office of Water and the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. Dwane has also served as the Federal Liaison to the Western States Water Council. Dwane led the initial development of the Water Quality Exchange (WQX) for EPA, played a key role in the development of EPA’s Clean Water Act Integrated Reporting systems, oversaw the implementation of updates to the RCRAInfo system, and has extensive experience with assisting partners in sharing water quality data. Dwane has a degree in Fisheries and Wildlife Management from Utah State University. He has spent the last seventeen years working on environmental data management systems.