Speakers

Keynote presenters

Speaker bios

Dr. McDonald is a Physical Scientist at the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory in Boulder, CO, and the program leader of the Atmospheric Composition Modeling Program. Prior to arriving in Colorado, he received his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering and Master’s in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a CIRES visiting postdoctoral fellow and received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineering in 2019. His expertise is on developing emission inventories of energy and urban systems, air quality modeling, and satellite remote sensing. He currently serves as the co-chair of the Global Emissions Initiative (GEIA) and is an Associate Editor with the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres.

Lesley Ott is a climate scientist with over 20 years of experience studying air pollution and greenhouse gases. She currently leads the carbon group within the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, NASA’s main center for understanding contemporary weather and climate using a family of advanced Earth system modeling tools. Her work focuses on combining satellite data and numerical models to better understand the sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and how the processes that control them may change over time. She also leads coordination of activities at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in support of the newly established U.S. GHG Center. 

Dr. Havala O. T. Pye is a research scientist in the Office of Research and Development at the US Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Pye’s work focuses on fine particles and other airborne pollutants that can impact human health and climate change. Specifically, she develops emission estimation methods and representations of fine particles and organic species in the Community Multiscale Air Quality modeling system allowing for improved quantification of air pollution impacts in regulatory analysis. She is the lead scientist for development of the Community Regional Atmospheric Chemistry Multiphase Mechanism (CRACMM). More information about Dr. Pye and her work can be found here.