UALBANY WEATHER ENTERPRISE
JEFF FREEDMAN
RESEARCH FACULTY
ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE RESEARCH CENTER
Email: jfreedman@albany.edu
Phone: 518-437-8737
Research Areas: Climate Change, Outage Management, Grid Resilience, Renewable Energy
Research Interests: LiDAR; Boundary Layer; wind and solar resource assessment; reliability of short-term power production forecasting; forest exchange processes and boundary layer cumulus clouds;
As part of the Boundary Layer Group here at ASRC, my main research focus is on renewable energy and atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) processes. This includes work on improving wind and solar power production forecasting, weather and climate influences on resource assessment, and the interaction of wind farms (and their performance) with the ABL. I have also investigated how clouds, particularly boundary layer cumulus, are modulated by the underlying surface and how this influences forest health and the solar energy resource. A principal tool for my observational work is a Leosphere Windcube 100S scanning LiDAR. Recent sponsored research includes the first Wind Forecasting Improvement Project (WFIP), a three-year Department of Energy (DOE)/National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) study to demonstrate the value of additional atmospheric observations and model enhancements on wind energy production forecasts, the development of the Solar Wind Integrated Forecast Tool (SWIFT), a state-of-the-art forecasting service for Hawaii´s electric utilities, and a LiDAR-based study of the 3D wind field over Cranberry Lake in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. The LiDAR was recently deployed here at ASRC to study rapid changes in low-level jet structure and compare wind profiles with the twice-daily high resolution soundings launched at the Albany National Weather Service Forecast Office.
PI on potential project(s)
An Offshore Wind Resource Assessment and Forecasting Tool (OWRAFT)
Climate Change and Renewable Energy
Energy Demand Forecast System for Cities
Enabling Least-Cost Firm PV Power Generation
JORGE E. GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ
PROFESSOR - EMPIRE INNOVATION
ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES RSCH CTR
Email: jgonzalez-cruz@albany.edu
Research Areas: Climate Change, Renewable Energy
Research Interests: Urban energy sustainability; Urban weather and climate; Urban remote sensing; Regional climate modeling and analysis; Urban boundary layer flows; Environmental modeling; Urban energy processes
Professor González holds several patents in solar energy equipment, aerosol detection, and energy forecasting for buildings, and was recognized as a prominent young researcher by the National Science Foundation with a prestigious CAREER Award. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, has delivered 100s of conference presentations, and his research has attracted more than $40M in external funding. Professor González is a Fellow Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), and Former Vice-Chairman of the American Meteorological Society Board on the Urban Environment. He was appointed in 2015 by the Mayor of the City as Member of the Climate Change Panel for the City of New York, and more recently as Senior Visiting Scientist of the Beijing Institute of Urban Meteorology and of Brookhaven National Laboratory. He is the coeditor of the ASME Handbook of Integrated and Sustainable Buildings Equipment and Systems, and was named this year 2019 as the Founding Editor of the newest ASME Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities.
PI on potential project(s)
Energy Demand Forecast System for Cities
Climate Change and Renewable Energy
Enabling Least-Cost Firm PV Power Generation
SUKANTA BASU
PROFESSOR OF EMPIRE INNOVATION
ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES RSCH CTR
Email: sbasu@albany.edu
PI on potential project(s)
Deep Learning-based Nowcasting of Damaging Winds
RICHARD PEREZ
SENIOR RESEARCH FACULTY
VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH- ASRC
Email: rperez@albany.edu
Phone: 518-437-8751
Research Areas: Renewable Energy
Research Interests: Solar Energy Resource assessment; Evaluating the impact of solar energy systems on utility power grids;
Solar Energy Resource assessment: Because the weather is the main driver of solar energy technologies, it is important to characterize and to quantify the influences of climate and weather on the solar resource.
PI on potential project(s)
Enabling Least-Cost Firm PV Power Generation
Energy Demand Forecast System for Cities
Climate Change and Renewable Energy
JUNHONG (JUNE) WANG
PROGRAM MANAGER, NEW YORK STATE MESONET
ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES RSCH CTR
Email: jwang20@albany.edu
Research Interests: NYS Mesonet; Climate observations, Data creation and analysis, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) measurements and applications, Sounding technology and data quality, Data QA/QC
Climate observations, data creation and analysis, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) measurements and applications, and sounding technology and data quality.
PI on potential project(s)
An Offshore Wind Resource Assessment and Forecasting Tool (OWRAFT)
KARA SULIA
RESEARCH FACULTY, DIRECTOR OF XCITE LAB
ASRC / XCITE LAB
Email: ksulia@albany.edu
Research Areas: Outage Management, Grid Resilience
Dr. Sulia's work within ice microphysics focuses on crystal growth theory as a means to improve microphysical parameterizations within numerical models. Ice particles grow in interesting and complex fashions, and the mechanisms of vapor diffusional growth are highly dependent on the myriad of ice crystal shapes that occur within the atmosphere. Ice crystal shape can have important impacts on mixed-phase cloud evolution and lifetime, precipitation rates, and surface radiative and energy budgets which can affect surface temperatures, and when in the Arctic, sea-ice extent. Ice particle shape also impacts collection processes, such as riming and aggregation, which enhance surface precipitation. Improving the representation of these processes is critical for accurate predictions of precipitation, especially in winter storms. Recent and continuing upgrades of North American radars to dual-polarization provides.
PI on potential project(s)
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ROB FOVELL
PROFESSOR
DAES
Robert Fovell is a professor of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, and received his PhD degree in 1988 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied under Prof. Yoshi Ogura. He served on the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles, between 1991 and 2015, prior to joining the faculty at the University at Albany.
Professor Fovell conducts research in mesoscale and convective scale meteorology, primarily using high-resolution numerical models. He has written papers on squall lines, tropical cyclones, sea breezes, boundary layer rolls, gravity waves, and climate classification, among other subjects. He has taught a variety of subjects, including mesoscale modeling and dynamics, atmospheric thermodynamics, synoptic meteorology, fluid dynamics, and atmospheric data analysis. His research work has been supported by agencies such as the NSF, NASA, NOAA, and the California Air Resources Board, and also private sector companies.
Email: rfovell@albany.edu
Research Areas: Renewable Energy;
SCOTT MILLER
RESEARCH FACULTY
ASRC
Research Interests: Surface exchange processes, or the way that things like heat, momentum, and trace gases (e.g., CO2) are transferred between the earth's surface and the atmosphere. These fluxes are driven to a large degree by atmospheric turbulence, and we measure them directly using techniques such as eddy covariance. My research is field-oriented, meaning we deploy scientific instruments in field settings, including forests, lakes, rivers and the ocean. The collected data can be used to improve the understanding of processes controlling surface exchange, and then be used in climate models to address questions about current and future biogeochemical cycles and climate.
Email: smiller@albany.edu
Research Areas: Climate Change; Grid Resilience;
DEEPAK KUMAR
RESEARCH SCIENTIST
ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES RSCH CTR
Email: dkumar3@albany.edu
Dr Deepak Kumar is an academic research professional with around 10 years of experience. Dr Kumar joined at the Center of Excellence in Weather and Climate Analytics, Atmospheric Science Research Center (ASRC) as a Research Scientist in August 2022. Before joining ASRC, he has been associated with Amity University Uttar Pradesh (India) as a full-time Assistant Professor from 2016 and has been revisiting a wide range of issues associated with traditional research activities in the intersection area of Geospatial Sciences, Climate Sciences, and Computational Sciences to utilise the technology for interdisciplinary research in the domain of Energy, Environment, Climate, Cities and Sustainability (SDG 7,10,11,13). He has research interest in the allied area urban energy sustainability, urban remote sensing, and urban microclimate analysis. He has completed two government-sponsored research projects namely “Hybrid Urban Landscape Analysis for Green Smart Cities through Geospatial Technology” sponsored by the Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, and “Meta-sensing of the urban footprint from airborne synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) data” sponsored from Space Applications Centre (ISRO), Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India as a sole principal investigator.
PI on potential project(s)
Analyzing the impact of extreme temperatures on energy systems across urban areas.
WILLIAM MAY
RESEARCH SUPPORT SPECIALIST
ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES RSCH CTR
Email: wmay@hey.com
Research Areas: Statistical programming and data visualization, Databases and data management, Statistical modeling, Economics and public policy
Spent 2 years as a research assistant with UAlbany’s Project Petition research group, studying social media and online petitions. Organized SQL databases, created data visualizations, and wrote code for text, network, and regression analyses. Following this, he worked for 2 years at the ASRC’s xcite software lab, developing software and statistical procedures for analyzing wind lidar data and creating interactive web apps for NYS Mesonet data and air quality simulations. For the past 3 years, William has been a data manager and statistician for the ASRC’s air quality research group, where he wrote an R package for cleaning air chemistry data, improved outlier detection and instrument calibration methods, created a data quality flagging web app, and advised grad students on statistics and programming.
PI on potential project(s)
Northeastern US Outage Dataset and Web Application
AIGUO DAI
DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT OF ATMOSPHERIC & ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Email: adai@albany.edu
Research Interest: Arctic climate change, climate variability and change, future climate change, the global water cycle, hydroclimate, drought, Asian monsoons, and climate data analysis
PI on potential project(s)
Cold-season Snowstorms over the Northeast U.S.: Historical and Future Changes and the Implications for Power Supply
COLLEGE OF EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS, HOMELAND SECURITY, & CYBER SECURITY
ERIC STERN
PROFESSOR
COLLEGE OF EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS, HOMELAND SECURITY AND CYBERSECURITY
Email: ekstern@albany.edu
Phone: 518-442-5784
Research Areas: Renewable Energy, Outage Management, Climate Change
Eric K. Stern is a professor at the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cyber-Security at the University at Albany. Dr. Stern holds a PhD from Stockholm University and a B.A. from Dartmouth College. He has published extensively in the fields of crisis and emergency management, crisis communication, resilience, security studies, executive leadership, foreign policy analysis and political psychology. He is also affiliated with the Swedish National Center for Crisis Management Research and Training at the Swedish Defense University (where he served as Director from 2004-2011) and the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware. He is currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Crisis Analysis. Other key areas of interest and expertise include social media and crisis preparedness, post-crisis evaluation and learning, interactive education and instructional design, and case research/teaching methodologies. In addition to his scholarly work, Dr. Stern has collaborated closely with a wide range of US (e.g. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology, FEMA, Coast Guard, and FBI) and foreign (e.g. UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Estonia, Slovenia, and S. Korea among others) government agencies, the European Union, and the OECD on a wide range of applied research and educational-- including training and exercise development--projects.