3 individuals and 3 teams receive 2024 ARM Service Awards
The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility recently revealed the winners of its sixth annual service awards. Three individuals and three teams received awards for providing exceptional service to ARM and its users.
The ARM Service Awards are typically announced at the Joint ARM User Facility/Atmospheric System Research (ASR) Principal Investigators Meeting. The joint meeting will not be held in 2024, but ARM’s Infrastructure Management Board did not want the year to go by without celebrating staff and their contributions. Because of this, ARM Director Jim Mather announced the 2024 winners during a virtual ARM All-Hands Meeting on June 4.
“As we all strive to deliver data to our users, we face new challenges each year, and I am always impressed by the dedication and teamwork that the ARM community shows in meeting those challenges,” says Mather. “This year has been no exception. We received a great group of nominees, and I am pleased to recognize and congratulate this year’s service award winners.”
Individual awardees and members of the winning teams all received certificates, which include signatures from ARM and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) leadership, and challenge coins.
Requests for nominations went to ARM staff and the broader community in April. Eight individuals and 12 teams were nominated. The Infrastructure Management Board reviewed the nominations and chose the honorees.
“I am continually impressed by the professionalism and dedication of ARM staff in overcoming challenges to provide the ARM user community with the observations and data they need for their research,” says DOE ARM Program Manager Sally McFarlane. “Congratulations to all the nominees and winners of this year’s awards. I would also like to thank the members of the ARM community who took the time and effort to nominate their colleagues for these awards in recognition of their work.”
The 2024 winners were:
Fan Mei, the science lead for the ARM Aerial Facility at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state, for her exceptional management of science-related activities within the aerial facility. Mei’s work has helped ensure the success of many field campaigns and led to innovative technological advancement and scientific discoveries.
Brad Perkins, ARM’s process support tools lead from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, for his exemplary work leading the development and documentation of software tools, including the ServiceNow platform for tracking and managing ARM workflows, and enhancing communications across ARM. Perkins resolves issues promptly and facilitates staff training and support.
Ken Teske, an Aerosol Observing System (AOS) operator at the Southern Great Plains atmospheric observatory in Oklahoma, for his outstanding oversight of the AOS instruments and day-to-day operations. Teske continually strives to learn about the instruments, and his dedication to and communication with the AOS mentor team, which is based elsewhere, is always excellent.
Seth Abernethy and Pawel Lech, site data system team members from Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, for their earnest dedication to ARM and its data systems along with their willingness to go above and beyond to resolve issues during the Eastern Pacific Cloud Aerosol Precipitation Experiment (EPCAPE) in La Jolla, California. Their diligent efforts saved the majority of the EPCAPE data after a system failure in October 2023.
Ken Burk, Erol Cromwell, Brian Ermold, Gabe Gibler, Josh Howie, Eddie Schuman, and Yan Shi, ingest development team members from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, for their quality work developing, managing, and maintaining ingests, including attention to new and historic datastreams. They succeeded at this while preparing for a transition to new software.
Brandon Androes, David Breedlove, Mike Day, Tim Grove, Rod Marler, Chris Martin, James Martin, Jody Martin, Doris McAbee, Liesa McKee, George Sawyer, John Schatz, Rod Soper, Kent Stehno, Jim Stow, David Swank, and Bryan Williams, members of the Southern Great Plains team, for their outstanding support of field campaigns around the observatory. In particular, the assistance they provided for the American WAKE experimeNt (AWAKEN) earned high praise and gratitude. They also received recognition for their benevolence in training staff who will support ARM’s Bankhead National Forest observatory in Alabama.
Learn more about the honorees, and see the full list of nominees.
Photos are courtesy of staff and institutions.
# # #ARM is a DOE Office of Science user facility operated by nine DOE national laboratories.