Group Dinner at the AMS Boundary Layers and Turbulence meeting, June 2018



left to right: Camden, Patrick, Julie, Jessica, Stephanie, Robert, Nicola, Laura, Philipp


Current Graduate Students


Rachel Robey Ph.D. Student in Applied Math, B.S. Applied Math University of Colorado Boulder. Rachel is using large eddy simulations (WRF LES) to better understand and try to better parameterize boundary layer flow over complex terrain, focusing on data from the Perdigão 2017 field campaign. She is joining the group after working with ocean surface boundary layers during a post-bac appointment at Los Alamos National Lab (LANL). In her free time, she enjoys climbing, whitewater kayaking, and generally adventuring in the mountains.



Alex Rybchuk Ph.D. Student in Mechanical Engineering co-advised by Prof. Greg Rieker, B.E. Mechanical Engineering Cooper Union. Alex models the impact of energy infrastructure on the atmospheric boundary layer. He has evaluated the ability of WRF-LES to accurately simulation emissions from natural gas infrastructure, and he has used these simulations to characterize monitoring systems. He is currently working on WRF's wind farm models to improve their interaction with planetary boundary layer schemes. Outside of work, you can find Alex slacklining or rock climbing in Boulder Canyon.


Miguel Sanchez Gomez Ph.D. Student in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, M.S. Mechanical Engineering 2019, University of Colorado Boulder. Miguel is interested in the technological and resource assessment aspects of renewable energies, primarily from wind energy. He has assessed how wind veer affects wind turbine power production in the CWEX-13 dataset, and is now using WRF-LES to assess upwind blockage effects from wind farms. In his free time, he enjoys mountain biking and backpacking.

Dave Rosencrans Ph.D Student in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, B.A. Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences University of Colorado at Boulder, 2020.  Dave is employing mesoscale modeling with the WRF Wind Farm Parameterization (WFP) to assess the potential wind resource offshore of the US East Coast.  In his free time, he enjoys playing tennis.


 

Andrew Kumler (he/him/his) Ph.D. Student in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, M.S. Atmospheric Sciences University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, B.S. (Double Major: Earth Systems, Environment, and Society; Atmospheric Sciences) University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Andrew is currently a research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), focusing on wind and solar resource assessment and forecasting. For his Ph.D., he will be exploring various forecasting techniques for on and offshore wind energy, from numerical weather prediction (NWP) to ensemble methods incorporating statistical and machine learning tools. He is also interested in the climate aspect of wind energy, and how large physical systems such as the atmosphere and ocean will interact in the future to change the available wind resource. In his free time, he is an athlete on the Boulder Racing triathlon team, competing in a variety of local and international races.

Andrew Metz Ph.D. Student in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, B.S. Mechanical Engineering 2019, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Andrew is interested in the behavior of wildfire smoke, which he will model using WRF-Fire starting in December 2020. Andrew is also interested in resource analysis for wind and solar energy. Free time finds him trail running and playing baroque continuo.



Camden Plunkett Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, B.S. Applied Meteorology, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University 2017. Camden is using WRF-Fire to explore how pyrocumulus clouds loft soot into upper regions of the atmosphere. In summer 2018, he deployed our lidars to support the ISARRA LASPE-RATE unmanned aerial system field campaign in southern Colorado.



Current Undergraduate Students


Hannah Livingston  B.S. University of Colorado Boulder, Mechanical and Energy Engineering, expected 2021. Hannah is investigating how system of interconnected offshore wind farms off the shore of Massachusetts could provide baseline power for New England, using National Wind Toolkit Data, toward the interest of determining the viability of a macrogrid. With an engineering background, she is interested in both the technical aspects as well as the economic and societal impacts arising from rapid renewable energy transitions. In her free time, Hannah enjoys trail running, backpacking, and training for triathlons.




Vincent Pronk  B.S. University of Colorado Boulder, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences expected 2020. Vincent is quantifying model skill for high resolution WRF simulations at the Southern Great Plains site in Oklahoma. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and playing soccer.





Jacob Anthony Silverstein B.S. University of Colorado Boulder, Environmental Studies, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, expected 2021. Jacob is investigating how wind turbine wakes behave under differing atmospheric conditions using LIDAR data from the National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). With a mathematics and environmental solutions background, he is interested in both the physical characteristics of energy production as well as the political and economic aspects of renewable energy. In his free time, Jacob enjoys skiing, recording music, and cooking.


Alumni

Ph.D.

Stephanie Redfern Ph.D. Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences 2021, M.S. Civil & Environmental Engineering Stanford University, M.A. Global Policy Studies University of Texas Austin, B.S. Mechanical Engineering University of Texas Austin. Stephanie has implemented and evaluated improvements to the WRF Wind Farm Parameterization (MWR 2019) as a graduate research fellow at CIRES and applied WRF-FIRE to simulating wildland and urban fires. In the summer of 2018 she worked on the WE-CAN field campaign in Boise, ID, taking aircraft-based aerosol measurements above wildfires. Dr. Redfern will soon be starting a postdoctoral researcher position in offshore wind energy at NREL's Flatirons Campus.



Jessica Tomaszewski Ph.D. Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences 2020, M.S. Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences 2018, B.S. Meteorology University of Oklahoma. Jessica has used large-eddy simulations of wind turbine wakes to demonstrate that wind turbine wakes do not pose hazards to small aircraft (WES2018). She has also used mesoscale modeling to evaluate interactions between wind farms (NE2018, AMS talk) and defined optimal settings for simulating wind farms in WRF (GMD 2020) and showed how wind farms affect weather events like thunderstorm outflow (WES 2020). During the Perdigão field campaign, she collected data and provided real-time plots of our lidar data to help make in-the-field decisions. During summers 2018 and 2019, she was a wind resource assessment intern at NextEra. Dr. Tomaszewski is now a wind energy research scientist at REsurety.

Nicola Bodini Ph.D. Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences 2019, M.Eng. University of Trento, Environmental and Land Engineering, B.Eng. University of Trento, Environmental and Land Engineering. Nicola is studying turbulence dissipation rate measurements from lidars (AMT2018) in complex terrain (ACP2019) and offshore (GRL2019). He has applied machine learning methods to better represent turbulence in atmospheric models. He has also used scanning lidar data to characterize wind turbine wakes (AMT2017), and has assessed interannual variability in wind resource assessment (WES2016).  He helped collect data during the Perdigão field campaign. Dr. Bodini is now a post-doctoral researcher in wind energy at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Flatirons Campus.

Laura Mazzaro Ph.D. Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences 2019; M.S. Environmental Engineering University of California Berkeley, B.S. Engineering Mechanics University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Laura has studied methods for improving atmospheric simulations by coupling mesoscale and large-eddy simulation models (JAMES2017) and for generating turbulence within nested large-eddy simulations using perturbation methods. Laura collected data during the Perdigão field campaign. Dr. Mazzaro is now an Applied Scientist at Descartes Labs.



Rochelle Worsnop  Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, 2018; M.S. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, 2016, B.S. in Meteorology from Florida State University with minors in Mathematics and Geography. Rochelle used large-eddy simulations to study turbulence in hurricanes with applications to offshore wind energy (BLM2017, GRL2017), and then focused on how to improve statistical forecasts of wind energy ramping events (WES 2018). While at CU, Rochelle helped collect data for the CWEX-13, XPIA, and WFIP2 field campaigns. Dr. Worsnop is now a Research Scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, through the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.


Joseph Cheuk-Yi Lee Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, 2018; B.S. Cornell University in Atmospheric Sciences with minor in Applied Economics. Joseph evaluated how the evening transition of the atmospheric boundary layer affect wind turbine wakes (BLM 2017) and then tested how well a mesoscale wind farm parameterization captured actual power production in an onshore wind farm (GMD 2017). He then focused on evaluating how interannual variability is considered in wind resource assessment (WES 2018, Torque2018). During summer 2016, he was an intern at GE. While at CU, Joseph helped collect data in the LUMEX, XPIA, and WFIP2 field campaigns. Dr. Lee is now a postdoctoral researcher in wind energy at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's National Wind Technology Center.

Clara St. Martin Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, 2017; B.S. The Pennsylvania State University in Meteorology with minor in Energy Engineering: Clara has studied atmosphere - wind energy interactions on a range of scales. She studied continental-scale correlations of winds and power production (ERL 2015). She assessed the relationship between upwind measurements of winds and the measurements on turbine nacelles (WES 2017), as well as atmospheric stability and atmospheric turbulence impacts on power production (WES 2016). During summers 2015 and 2016 she was an intern at GE Renewable Energy. While at CU, Clara was the lead forecaster for the TODS campaign and helped collect data in the CWEX-13, LUMEX, XPIA, and WFIP2 field campaigns. Dr. St. Martin is now a wind resource assessment engineer at GE.

Brian Vanderwende Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, 2015; M.S. University of Colorado at Boulder in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, B.S.  The Pennsylvania State University in Meteorology: Brian has quantified atmospheric stability impacts on wind turbine power production (ERL 2012), assessed if wind turbine power production is related to nearby crops (BLM 2016),  assessed lidar obsevations and mesoscale simulations of nocturnal low-level jet behavior in the midwest (MWR 2015), and employed large-eddy simulations to test mesoscale wind farm parameterizations (JAMES 2016).  Dr. Vanderwende now works at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in scientific computing.

Matt Aitken Ph.D. Physics CU Boulder, 2014; M.S. North Carolina State University in Aerospace Engineering, B.S. University of North Carolina in Physics: Matt studied wind turbine wakes via Doppler lidar observations and large eddy simulations. He has characterized the performance of lidars (JTech 2012), developed approaches for quantifying wake characteristics from scanning lidar and CFD models (JTech 2014), quantified wakes from nacelle-based lidar (JTech 2014b), and compared observations to large eddy simulations of a turbine with a generalized actuator disk model (JRSE 2014) to observations. After a postdoctoral research position at the Environmental Protection Agency, Dr. Aitken is now a fellow at the Croatan Institute.

M.S.

Michael Rhodes, M.S. University of Colorado at Boulder, Aerospace Engineering, B.S. North Carolina State University, Aerospace Engineering: Michael used Doppler lidar to quantify the wind speed deficit and turbulence enhancement of a turbine wake during the CWEX-11 experiment (BLM 2013), and continued to work with our instruments during the TODS, CWEX-13, and LUMEX campaigns. After working  at NOAA's Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Boulder, Mike is currently the laboratory manager at RECUV at CU Boulder working with drone for atmospheric measurements.

Undergraduate researchers

Madison Shogrin B.A. University of Colorado Boulder, Environmental Studies, 2020, with minors in ATOC and Geography. Building on her internship at JPL studying quantifying water vapor in the planetary boundary layer using combined data from OCO-2 and AIRS using ARM SGP products, Madison completed an honors thesis broadening validation regions/datasets using IGRA and others. In her free time, she likes to snowboard and hike. In Fall 2020, she has joined Emily Fischer's group at Colorado State University.

James Bell B.A. University of Colorado Boulder, Geography with a minor in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, expected 2020. James investigated mountain waves using lidar and turbine measurements from the WFIP2 field campaign. In his free time, he enjoys photography, skateboarding and hiking In the mountains.


Patrick Murphy B.A. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, 2018. Patrick joined our group in spring 2017, just in time to join the Perdigão field campaign. After returning to Boulder, he analyzed lidar and surface station data to characterize wind turbine wakes. In summer 2018, he deployed our lidars to support the ISARRA LASPE-RATE unmanned aerial system field campaign in southern Colorado. After an internship at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory analyzing atmospheric measurements for a wake steering field campaign, Patrick has started a PhD in atmospheric science at the University of Washington.

Rachel Robey B.S. University of Colorado at Boulder, Applied Math and Computer Science, 2017. Rachel explored the interaction of hurricanes and offshore wind farms using mesoscale models. In her spare time, Rachel is an avid climber and whitewater kayaker. After a few years as a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the ocean modeling group, she has returned to CU Boulder at a PhD student in the Lundquist group (see above!).




Jiwan Rana B.S. University of Colorado at Boulder, Computer Science, 2015: Jiwan used python and NCL to provide insight into the atmospheric boundary layer datasets collected by our research group. (Check out his CWEX-13 data page!) He is interested in scientific visualization, parallel computing, and machine learning. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and photography, and spending time with his electric guitar.


Daniel Pollak M.S.  European Wind Energy Master's Program, 2014; B.S. The Pennsylvania State University, Meteorology, 2011: Daniel evaluated the performance of a SODAR instrument during the TWICS-2011 experiment in summer 2011 and carried out simulations of an offshore wind farm in summer 2012. He is now an Associate at REsurety, Inc., working on Valuation & Risk Analytics.

Kelley Hestmark B.S. University of Colorado at Boulder, Biochemistry and Environmental Engineering: During her summer undergraduate research experience in our group in 2012, Kelley analyzed Doppler lidar data from the TWICS-2011 experiment (JTech 2014). Kelley started graduate school at UC Davis in Fall 2014.



Visitors

Philipp Gasch Ph.D. 2020 (expected) Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), M.Sc., KIT, Meteorology, 2016; M.A., Tel Aviv University, Environmental Studies, 2014. Philipp built a simulator in large-eddy simulation codes for airborne lidar measurements of boundary-layer winds to provide uncertainty quantification for those measurements (AMT 2020). Philipp visited our group in Spring 2018.

Robert Menke Ph.D. 2020 Danish Technical University, M.S. Engineering Physics University of Oldenburg, B. Eng. Engineering Physics University of Oldenburg. Robert managed several of DTU's scanning lidars during the Perdigao field campaign, and has used those data to characterize wind turbine wakes (WES2018) and investigate recirculation zones in the Perdigao valley (ACP2019). Robert visited our group Jan-Jul 2018 and NCAR in 2019. After graduation, Dr. Menke joined the wind energy industry.


Simon Siedersleben Ph.D. 2019 Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Simon is interested in offshore wind farm wakes and participated in the WIPAFF experiment to measure wakes (NSR2018), and he has carried out simulations of those wakes with the WRF wind farm parameterization to assess wind speed deficit predictions (MZ2018) as well as local temperature and moisture impacts (ERL2018) and turbulence kinetic energy changes (GMD2020). Simon visited our group in Fall 2017.



Mihael Plut M.S. 2016 European Wind Energy Master's Program. Mihael assessed methods for representing wind farms in WRF. He is now Lead Performance Engineer at GE Renewables in Barcelona. Mihael visited our group Jan-Jul 2016.




Nicola Bodini M.S.. 2016 University of Trento Environmental and Land Engineering. Nicola used scanning lidar data to characterize wind turbine wakes (AMT2017) in summer-fall 2016, and interannual variability in wind resource assessment (WES2016) when he visited our research group in summer 2015, and then returned for his PhD (see above).




Lukas Vollmer Ph.D. 2019 ForWind, Carl-von-Ossietzky Universitat Oldenburg. Lukas uses large-eddy simulations to explore the behavior of wind turbine wakes, and used data from the CWEX-11 field campaign for his large-eddy simulations of wakes in a range of stability conditions (Visby2017). He visited our group in Fall of 2015.


Ken Tay Ph.D. 2018 Nanyang Technological University, B.Eng (Aero).  Nanyang Technological University in Aerospace Engineering: Ken nested Large-Eddy Simulation techniques within mesoscale weather models for the purpose of improving wind resource assessment. Ken visited CU-Boulder in May-June 2013 and again May 2014 - March 2015.

Gao Xiaoxia Ph.D Building Service Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, M.S. Hebei University of Enginnering in HVAC, B.S Yanshan University: Gao has studied offshore wind resource assessment near Hong Kong. She quantified wind turbine wake characteristics from the CWEX-13 field campaign. Gao visited CU-Boulder in Apr-Jul 2014.



Emil Hedevang Lohse Sørensen Aarhus University, visitor Spring 2012

Martin de Mare Danish Technological University, visitor Spring 2012