Mary M. Glackin, deputy assistant administrator for satellite and information services at the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has received the 2001 Presidential Rank Award for extraordinary contributions to NOAA's management and programs. She was among federal senior executives honored by President George W. Bush at a ceremony Oct. 15.

In her position with NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, Glackin oversees operations of several key areas, including satellite operations, satellite data processing and distribution, systems development, and research and applications. She also oversees three national data centers and the office that is merging civilian and military environmental satellite programs.

Glackin has reorganized the NESDIS headquarters office to make it more responsive to the operating units. She has also taken steps to develop the workforce by conducting innovative training programs and ensuring that a work environment exists where all employees can thrive.

In her six years of senior executive service, Glackin has sustained a record of outstanding accomplishments. She successfully developed and deployed a system that provides National Weather Service forecasters with the capability of issuing greatly improved severe weather warnings and forecasts with a reduced workforce. Glackin's managerial skills saved the government millions of dollars and won the 1999 Smithsonian-ComputerWorld Award for Information Technology in the energy, environment, and agriculture category.

Glackin lives in Ellicott City, Md. She has two daughters, Laura, 23, and Cara 17.

NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center is part of the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, the nation's primary source of space-based meteorological and climate data. NESDIS operates the nation's environmental satellites, which are used for weather forecasting, climate monitoring, and other environmental applications such as fire detection, ozone monitoring, and sea surface temperature measurements. NESDIS also operates three data centers, which house global data bases in climatology, oceanography, solid earth geophysics, marine geology and geophysics, solar-terrestrial physics and paleoclimatology.

To learn more about NESDIS, please visit http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov.