Mike Ek became the Director Joint Numerical Testbed at NCAR in February of 2018. Before NCAR, Mike was the Deputy Director of the Environmental Modeling Center (EMC, part of NOAA), and also led the land-hydrology modeling team. EMC develops and improves numerical weather and earth system models through a broad program in partnership with the research community. Prior to joining NOAA in 1999, he was at Oregon State University, where his research focused on land and atmospheric boundary-layer model development. He has led and participated in various national and international activities in earth system study and model development. He is currently co-chair for the Global Land/Atmosphere System Study, which is part of the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) project (under the World Meteorological Organization's World Climate Research Programme). Mike has also been involved in community research and educational outreach activities, from student competitions at conferences, chairing the American Meteorological Society committee on Hydrology, serving on Ph.D. committees and lecturing at summer schools on weather and climate, to major research initiatives, program panel reviews and national and international conferences. He received his Ph.D. from Wageningen University in the Netherlands in 2005, with his dissertation topic on land-atmosphere interaction.
His talk will be on 'Land-atmosphere interaction over agricultural regions'.
