Jeff Szkodzinski

About Jeff Szkodzinski

Jeff Szkodzinski works as a research scientist and scientific programmer supporting the NOAA STAR ASTA 2.0 program at Science and Technology Corporation (STC). Jeff designs new capabilities for weather forecasting applications and aims to integrate NUCAPS (NOAA Unique Combined Atmospheric Processing System) sounding data into other software visualization packages which forecasters regularly use. He also evaluates the integrity of the NUCAPS retrieval algorithm through case study analysis and developed enhancements for the science code base. Prior to joining STC, Jeff worked as a software developer for the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) program. He designed and tested various operational forecasting tools which would be deployed to all the NOAA Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) and national centers. Throughout his career, Jeff has developed a close working relationship with the end-user community and consistently strives to better understand the needs of the forecaster. Please see https://github.com/NUCAPS for coding samples.

Experience

1. Remote Sensing Research Scientist

   Science And Technology Corporation Stc

   Apr 2020 — Present · College Park, MD, US

   Supports several NOAA-funded initiatives under the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Proving Ground program.• Provides algorithm development support for NASA SPoRT (Short-term Prediction Research and Transition Center), NOAA, the Space Science & Engineering Center (SSEC) at the University of Wisconsin and other external customers.• Develops data visualization tools to support stakeholders, field campaign organizers, and NWS meteorologists.o Assisted NASA SPoRT, CIRA (Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere), and JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) with setting up the NUCAPS data access for the Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT). Served as the subject matter expert for soundings throughout the three-week experiment and provided technical assistance and scientific training to forecasters.o Contributed to the installation of updates to AWIPS plugins such as Gridded NUCAPS, which is led by funded PI Emily Berndt (NASA/SPoRT).o Configured the open-source SHARPpy (Sounding Hodograph/Analysis and Research Program in Python) forecasting program to display NUCAPS soundings in real-time. Users can view the latest satellite sounding profiles as a skew-T in SHARPpy (i.e, NOAA-20, S-NPP, Aqua and MetOp-A/-B/-C). Cloud top fraction and height are now available for the first time to NWS users.• Supports PGRR Sounding Initiative PIs through direct research and development collaboration. Connects PIs with data users, developers, and other PGRR PIs across initiatives.o Provided users with retrieval data that are not available in operational NUCAPS Environmental Data Records (EDR), such as information content via averaging kernels to Brad Pierce (Researcher, SSEC). Increased interest in assimilating NUCAPS has led to an STC recommendation to NESDIS/STAR to add averaging kernels to the NUCAPS EDR. These parameters will take effect for NUCAPS EDR v3.

Education

• Northern Illinois University

  Bachelor of Science, Meteorology

  2003 — 2007

• Mississippi State University

  Masters of Science, Applied Meteorology

  2014 — 2017

Skills

• IT Strategy
• Grads
• Meteorology
• Dod
• Severe Weather
• Awk
• Spatial Analysis
• Python
• Numerical Weather Prediction
• Geomatics
• Weather Radar
• Geography
• Spatial Databases
• Geodatabase
• Research
• 3d Studio Max
• Photoshop
• Marine Weather
• Matlab
• R
• Team Leadership
• Illustrator
• Grib2
• Bufkit
• Energy
• Aviation
• Global Mapper
• Gempak
• Lidar
• Oracle
• Wrf
• Esri
• Satellite Imagery
• Statistics
• Arcsde
• Weather Forecasting
• Forecasting
• Emacs
• Bash
• Sql