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As the 2005-2006 academic year comes to a close, let me to take this opportunity to reflect on the events of the year in our department. First, we bid farewell to our graduating senior class. As you probably know, this class distinguished itself by winning the National Collegiate Weather Weather Forecasting Contest (NCWFC), beating out teams from over 40 other schools in the US. We are very proud of these guys! Congratulations also go to senior Massoud Fazal for winning the (NCWFC) individual competition. Our seniors are moving on to careers and graduate school, and we wish them good luck. Congratulations also go to Mike Voss for guiding these students in their forecasting class. Mike himself is a two-time ocverall winner of the individual forecasting contest. We also bid farewell to three of our graduate students who are completing their studies. Chakkrit Reamruk (thesis abstract) is returning to his native Thailand, where he serves in the Royal Thai Navy. In July, Chakkrit will present the results of his thesis work at the American Geophysical Union's 2006 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Beijing, China (details). Shoukri Kasakeh (thesis abstract) will work in the US for a year before returning to his native Palestine, where he will work at the ARIJ research institute. Rochelle Balmori (thesis abstract) will work at the environmental consulting company AER, which is located in the Bay Area. Afterwards, she plans to pursue her PhD in the US. As you can see, our graduate students are an international bunch! Three of our students recently presented research work at the SJSU College of Science Research Day (Chakkrit Reamruk and John Noble - both graduate students - and Kim Campo of our senior class). In addition, John presented some of his early results at a workshop in Granada, Spain (details), and Kim presented her senior thesis work at the American Meteorological Society's 27th annual Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology in Monterey, CA (details). Our students have had a productive year! Our faculty have also been active on the research front! Eugene Cordero, Bob Bornstein & Mike Voss attended the AMS's 86th annual meeting in Atlanta, GA. Earlier in the year, Eugene was in Erding, Germany for a 2006 World Meteorological Organization Ozone Assessment chapter meeting. In October Alison Bridger presented her research at a workshop on Mars modeling at New Mexico State University, and in this Spring Tom Rickenbach presented his research at the Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology conference in Monterey(details). Over the summer, Tom will travel to Niamey, Niger (West Africa) to participate in the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary (AMM) experiment! The goal of this multinational campaign is to further the understanding of the West African monsoon and study precipitation systems associated with easterly waves. Tom will be working at MIT's radar site to be deployed at the airport in Niamey (details). Bob Bornstein attended several meetings associated with his air quality meteorology projects. These included trips to the Middle East (USAID project), Portland & Houston (NSF projects), and New York (DHS project). Both Bob Bornstein and Jindra Goodman are on the faculty early retirement plan, which allows them to teach ½ time. Jindra is using the extra time to attend programs training her and her dogs in their Search & Rescue work, and Bob is using the time to attend more meetings! He just returned from meetings in Dubrovnik, Croatia and in Puerto Rico, and has also been appointed Chair of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Jerry Steffens wraps up another year of intense teaching. The GE class he developed (METR 112) has become very popular, with several sections always filled to the brim. Spring 2005 saw the end Jindra Goodman's tenure as Chair of the Department, and Spring 2006 brings the end of the first semester of Alison Bridger's reign. We thank Jindra for all her hard work and devotion - Alison has a lot to live up to! This year also saw the rollout of our new web page - we hope you like the new and improved look. We plan to post regular updates and other features,so please bookmark us and visit regularly. Finally, a word about our weather this year. Although we don't have killer blizzards, tornadoes, or hurricanes in California, we still have plenty of weather to study and forecast! The state was dry as a bone until late last Fall - tough for the ski industry. Christmas snows brought us back up to normal in a hurry, but then another dry spell hit. That was followed by what seemed like an eternity of rainy days. I thought for a while I was living in England again! We broke records in San Jose for the number of rainy days and cool temperatures. Hope you all have a productive yet relaxing summer! See you next year! Alison Bridger Chair
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