NOAA NAMES NEW HEAD OF RESEARCH OFFICE

Richard D. Rosen, vice president and chief scientist of a Massachusetts research and development company and past president of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), has been named assistant administrator of NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). NOAA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"Dr. Rosen brings a wealth of scientific expertise and deep understanding of NOAA’s research mission and goals,” said retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “NOAA and its research office will be well served.”

NOAA’s research office includes 12 laboratories, as well as programs and projects across the United States that conduct research into climate, weather and ocean issues. Rosen begins his new duties the week of
Oct. 5, 2003.

Upon accepting the position, Rosen said, “I have long admired the contributions made by NOAA Research to furthering our understanding of complex environmental issues and to applying this understanding to national needs. I expect OAR will continue to build upon these accomplishments, working with NOAA’s partners elsewhere in government, at universities and in private industry, here and abroad. I feel honored and privileged to have been given this opportunity to lead the talented and dedicated people of OAR.”

At Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc., in Lexington, Mass., Rosen was engaged in a broad range of studies related to large-scale atmospheric dynamics, with particular emphasis on diagnosing observations and models of the general circulation and climate. He has been the principal investigator on a series of grants and contracts from NOAA, the National Science Foundation and NASA aimed at studying different aspects of large-scale atmospheric behavior.

He has worked with extensive collections of global upper-air data and analyses, and has published his results in nearly 70 scientific papers. Rosen has also been a senior lecturer in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where for three decades he taught graduate level courses on the general circulation of the Earth's atmosphere.

Rosen is a member of NOAA’s Science Advisory Board, the only federal advisory committee with responsibility to advise the under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere on long- and short-range strategies for research, education and the application of science to resource management, environmental assessment and prediction. Rosen also serves on NOAA's Climate Monitoring Working Group, charged with addressing the mission to observe the global climate system.

He is a member of the National Research Council's Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, having earlier served on and/or chaired other NRC committees and panels. He has served on numerous other advisory bodies, as well as on special study groups of the International Association of Geodesy devoted to the subject of Earth's momentum balance. Reflecting his multidisciplinary interests, Rosen was editor-in-chief of the book series Atmospheric and Oceanographic Sciences Library of Kluwer Academic Publishers during 1994-97.

Rosen served as an editor of the AMS journal Monthly Weather Review during 1986-87 and was a founding editor of the Journal of Climate, serving in that position during 1988-89 and then as an associate editor during 1990-95. Rosen was then AMS commissioner for scientific and technological activities during 1996-2001 before becoming president-elect in January 2001. He was elected a fellow of the AMS in 1991, and he is a recipient of a 1995 AMS Editor's Award.

Rosen holds a Ph.D. in meteorology (1974) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also earned his master’s and bachelor’s degrees. Rosen and his wife Michele have lived in the suburbs of Boston, Mass., for more than 30 years

The Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through research to better understand weather and climate-related events and to manage wisely our nation's coastal and marine resources.

On the Web:

NOAA: http://www.noaa.gov

NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research: http://www.research.noaa.gov