Professionals, Mentor, and Documentation

I chose a number of field professionals to interact with – approximately twenty – from professors at universities involved with hurricane research as well as from hurricane researchers at the Hurricane Research Division (HRD) and forecasters working for the National Hurricane Center (NHC). Since twenty is a lot of people to give even brief descriptions about, here is a little bit about each of the professional who responded to me.

Professor Evans, a professor of tropical Penn State University, who teaches and researches tropical meteorology

Kerry Emanuel, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mark Bourassa, professor of meteorology at Florida State University

Phil Klotzbach, a professor of meteorology at Colorado State University, co-head of a team that makes the second most famous yearly hurricane forecast

Howie Friedman, the deputy director of the HRD

Mark Powell, researcher of tropical meteorology at the HRD

Sim D. Aberson, a researcher of tropical meteorology at the HRD

Sylvie Lorsolo, a researcher of tropical meteorology at the HRD

James Franklin, the current branch chief of NHC

Stacy Stewart, senior hurricane specialist at the NHC.

I chose all of these people for some hopefully obvious reasons – they are all involved in some form of meteorology, either through forecasting or research. They are either professors at major universities, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center, or paid researchers at the Hurricane Research Division in Miami, FL.

For documentation, I kept a journal of my thoughts and ideas, as I thought this was the best method of recording not only all of my thoughts, but an evolution of my ideas as I gained more knowledge and insight throughout the year. Looking back, I’m able to see where I went wrong (and right), so when I do other research projects later in life, I will have a much better idea of how to formulate my initial plans and ideas.

Finally, I chose my mentor, Jason Dunion, because of his connection to the Hurricane Research Division as well as his willingness and eagerness to help me along with this project. Without him, I doubt what I accomplished would have been possible.