One of the NOAA forecasters works to synthesize all the data coming in from spacecraft and ground stations.

I was born in 1959 in Fairbanks, Alaska, and graduated from West Valley High School in 1977. I went to Undergraduate School at the University of Oregon, in Eugene. I started by taking courses in what I liked and what I was good at-Science and Math. I decided that Physics would be a good major because I could always switch from physics to anything else. And I finished up in 1981 with a B.S. in physics and a B.S. in math.

During summer between my junior and senior years in college, I worked at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska. I liked the work so much that I applied to graduate school and got a research/teaching assistantship. I went to Graduate School at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and received a Master of Sciences Degree in 1984. My thesis topic was "Pulsating Aurora and its Relation to the Hb Hydrogen Emission."