Jennifer Mahoney is the Director of the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories/Global Systems Laboratory (ESRL/GSL). She leads a staff of nearly 200 meteorologists, software engineers, and support staff dedicated to “making forecasts better.” GSL research provides the NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) and the public with rapidly-updating environmental models, state-of-the-art decision support tools, innovative visualization systems, and high-performance computing technology to support commerce and a weather-ready nation. GSL’s most recognizable accomplishments include NOAA’s High-Resolution Rapid Refresh high-impact weather prediction model used in NWS operations, the Science on a Sphere®, a six-foot diameter animated globe used to display Earth science datasets seen by nearly 50 million people each year, and forecast tools used in 120 NWS offices for predicting the weather and supporting impact-based weather decisions.
Jennifer holds a Master’s degree in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Meteorology from the University of Northern Colorado. Jennifer is a member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and is serving on the Commission on the Weather, Water and Climate Enterprise Steering Committee as well as on the board for the AMS Committee on Environmental Information Processing Techniques.
Jennifer has served as GSL Deputy Director, the Lead for the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Quality Assessment Product Development Team, and as the Chief of GSD’s Forecast Impact and Quality Assessment Section. In 2017 and 2003, NOAA’S OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) selected Jennifer as the NOAA Research Employee of the Year for Leadership. Jennifer’s research expertise is in the areas of atmospheric science for aviation and winter weather, impact-based verification and assessment, and decision support strategies for forecast systems.
![]() Melissa (Missy) Petty serves as the Associate Director for Administration in the Global Systems Laboratory (GSL). Before joining GSL’s Office of the Director, Missy worked for the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) as a GSL affiliate, serving as Chief of GSL’s Forecast Impact and Quality Assessment Section (FIQAS). In this role, she worked closely with the National Weather Service, Federal Aviation Administration, and other stakeholders to advance operationally-relevant forecast evaluation techniques and technologies, leading a multidisciplinary team of scientists and software engineers to perform formal, in-depth product assessments and develop related evaluation tools and decision support systems. Missy’s career began as a software engineer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where she was involved in the implementation of various forecast systems, including aviation weather forecasts for turbulence and ceiling and visibility, and a statistical forecast system that is used in multiple market segments. This was followed by a period in the private sector working for SAP, one of the market leaders in enterprise application software. She returned to the atmospheric science community as a software engineer in FIQAS, developing automated data processing and analysis systems to support forecast verification. Missy holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a B.A. in Mathematics from Millsaps College in Jackson, MS. |
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![]() Ligia got her Ph.D. at Colorado State University in 1997 in numerical prediction of mesoscale convective systems. In 1999, she took a position in the National Weather Service of her native country, Brazil, to help stand up the first operational numerical weather prediction system focused on South America. In 2003 she started working at GSL (then FSL) in model testing and evaluation activities for the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC), of which she was the Deputy Director until 2022. During 2020-2022 she was EPAD’s deputy chief.
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