S. Mark Leidner

Mark Leidner has over fifteen years experience in atmospheric modeling and 18 years in scientific research and development. Mr. Leidner has been the lead scientist on AER's ensemble forecast (eCast) service since its conception in 2001. Currently he is the business and science lead with the University of Oklahoma at an AER branch office in Norman, Oklahoma. He has a BS in Engineering from Carnegie Mellon (1989) and a MS in Meteorology from Penn State. Mr. Leidner's graduate work involved numerical weather prediction and data assimilation under Dr. David Stauffer, the Principal Developer of the PennState/NCAR MM5. He spent fifteen months at the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts working as a consultant on surface winds from the NASA scatterometer instrument. At ECMWF, he introduced the use of scatterometer data in the Centre's 4D-variational analysis assimilation system. He did similar work on the MM5 model for the Turkish State Meteorological Service and the MIT Haystack Observatory, among other NASA and NOAA funded research projects. His science interests are largely focused on numerical weather prediction, ensemble forecasting, and controlled weather modification simulated through models.