Biographical note

Seon Ki Park is Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering and Founding Director of the Severe Storm Research Center and the Center for Climate/Environment Change Prediction Research at the Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea. He obtained a Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma and M.S. and B.S. in Meteorology from the Seoul National University, Korea. He had worked as a research scientist at the University of Oklahoma, University of Maryland and NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. His research focuses on storm- and meso-scale meteorology, hydrometeorology, and parameter estimation and data assimilation to improve numerical weather/climate prediction.

Liang Xu is the Head of Atmospheric Dynamics & Prediction Branch and a Meteorologist at the Marine Meteorology Division, Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, California, USA. He leads a fully integrated research program encompassing all aspects of numerical weather prediction and data assimilation, focusing on critical issues related to the analysis and prediction of atmospheric processes and phenomena within the Navy's Earth System Prediction Capability. He and his team have developed, tested, and transitioned to the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanographic Center (FNMOC), an operational global atmospheric 4DVar data assimilation system.