Biographies of members (SG-ENE)
Chair
Alberto Troccoli
Dr. Alberto Troccoli is the co-founder and managing director of the world energy meteorology council (WEMC). With over 25 years of experience in the fields of meteorology and climate, he has more recently been exploring their applications in the energy sector. Alberto holds a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Edinburgh (UK)
Co-chair
Tobias Fuchs
Mr. Fuchs is a member of the board of directors of the German meteorological service (DWD). He is responsible for DWDs climate services (Operations and Research) – which inter alia comprise the implementation of achievements from national and European research activities on user-oriented climate services for the energy sector. His scientific focus is the application of regional NWP re-analyses and of weather and climate predictions for operational services in support of the German energy transition from carbon-based energy production to renewable energy production.
Members
Jinkyu Hong
Dr. Hong is a professor at Yonsei University in South Korea. He has developed power load forecasting models considering impact of climate changes. His current work is in the area of urban climatology and wind power prediction. His work and interest area is Urban climate, climate-energy interaction, land-atmosphere interaction.
Henerica Tazvinga
Dr. Tazvinga works at the South African Weather Service. She is the leader of the energy team which is responsible for the solar radiometric network project, which involves monitoring and storing observational and historical data. Before joining the South African Weather Service, she was working for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research of South Africa. She earned her Master's degree in Renewable Energy and she specialized in energy optimization and management in renewable energy-based systems during her Ph.D. She has been involved in many energy, consulting, and innovating projects. . Her research interests are in energy optimization and management of micro-grid systems, meteorology for the energy sector, and water-food-energy nexus.
Christopher Oludhe
Dr. Christopher Oludhe is a Meteorologist by profession and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Meteorology, University of Nairobi. He is also an Associate Lecturer at the Institute of Climate Change and Adaptation (ICCA) of the University of Nairobi. Dr. Oludhe has been engaged in various activities related to climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation studies in close collaboration with the IGAD Climate Prediction and Application Centre (ICPAC) where has been engaged in capacity building activities on seasonal climate prediction and Climate Risk Assessment in the Grea ter Horn of African (GHA) countries. Dr. Oludhe is a former Chair of the Technical Working Group on Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation to climate change for Kenya and a former member of the Technical Expert Team for WMO-CLIPS on End-User Liaison for RAI; Expert Team on Seasonal Climate Updates as well as in the Commission for Climatology for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Sven-Erik Gryning
Dr. Gryning earned his Ph.D. degree from Risø's Physics department of Danish technical university in 1982. He is currently working in the department of wind energy in DTU and His focus has consistently been on meteorology, especially in the lower parts of the atmosphere. The subject of the studies has changed over the years from aspects of air pollution, basic meteorological issues to wind energy. He has at times worked at laboratories and universities abroad, i.e. Pennsylvania State University in USA, EU Joint Research Center, Ispra, Italy and Defense Research Center, Umeå, Sweden. He is convenor and founder of the session on Energy Meteorology at the Annual meeting of the European Meteorological Society.
Dinara Fasolko
Ms. Dinara Fasolko is a senior research scientist in Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory of the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring (Roshydromet). Her research focuses on assessing the impact of climate change on various economy sectors, including traditional and renewable energy. She carries out a climate service that is based on observed and expected climate changes and micro-climatic assessments of tailored climatic characteristics in complex terrain. The sphere of her activities also includes the development of adaptation measures and the updating building codes in view of changing climate conditions.
Kristian Horvath
Dr. Horvath is vice Head of the research and development section in Croatia meteorology and hydrology service agency (DHMZ). He is specialized in numerical modeling and meteorology. After his PhD he has worked as an investigator in DTU working on wind energy topics.
Wai-kin Wong
Wai-kin Wong is Senior Scientific Officer of the Forecast Development Division at the Hong Kong Observatory. He leads a team on operational activities and technique developments on nowcasting of rainstorms, tropical cyclone, and hazardous weather, as well as the Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre (RSMC) for Nowcasting. The team also involves in applications of numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, development of model post-processing methods, use of machine learning in forecasting of high-impact weather, location-specific and urban-scale weather processes from very short-range to medium range for public and supporting various user communities such as power utilities.
Sarah Osima
Dr. Osima earned her Ph.D. in climate modeling, climate variability, and climate change from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is working as the manager of the environment and research section in the Tanzania meteorological agency. Dr. Osima is actively engaged in the climate change and variability research area and collaborates in supporting various activities including project developments related to climate, agriculture, and the environment in Tanzania. Her team has focused on wind data analysis She is also working with FAO, research on climate change and resilience in agriculture and energy in the area of lake Victoria.
Dong Zhao
Dr. Zhao holds a Ph.D. in the climate system and global change from Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology. He is now the deputy manager of Beijing Jiutian Meteorological Technology Co. Ltd, a leading corporation in delivering customized weather and climate service to energy & power sectors in China, focusing predominately on impact-based early warning, wind and solar energy utilization, and industrial meteorological service strategy. He also serves as the deputy director at Energy Meteorology Joint Research Center, fostering innovation and increasing productivity through partnerships between research institutions and enterprises, as well as deep fusion of meteorology and energy. In 2019, Zhao won the First Award of National Smart Weather Service Innovation form CMA and Gold Award of Youth Innovation Competition from China State Grid for his innovative work and forward-thinking practice in energy meteorological service.
Fang Yang
Dr. Fang Yang, Director of Climate Change & Environmental Research Division Economic and Technology Research Institute Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation (GEIDCO). She graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering of Tsinghua University and used to be a visiting scholar in research institutions in Singapore, Japan, etc. She mainly engaged in the strategy planning for power system and SGCC development, policy research, global governance and energy transition research, etc. Until 2021, she has participated the editing of more than 10 books and published more than 50 academic papers.
José Alberto Zúñiga Mora
Jose Alberto is the Head of Coordination of the areas of Hydrology, Topography and Structural survey at the Department of Basic Studies Costa Rican Institute of Electricity. As a Civil Engineer, he has worked for more than 25 years in Hydrology, being in charge of 90% and 45% of the hydrological and meteorological networks of the country, respectively. In the early stage he was part of the group in charge of field work and later was asked to be in charge of Hydrological Feasibility studies for hydropower projects, design of Early Warning systems for dam sites and survey of sediments in reservoirs. He has participated in the Regionalization of extreme floods in Costa Rica and several environmental flow assessments. The department he works in delivers forecasts on precipitation, wind and discharge for hourly and daily energy dispatch purposes. His area of interest is forecast of renewable sources of energy. In 2020 Jose Alberto was appointed as Hydrological Advisor to the president of RA IV.
Natasha Saddof
Ms. Natasha Sadoff is a geographer and social scientist who works at the nexus of environmental management, governance, and Earth science. She brings an interdisciplinary, needs-driven approach to a diverse range of topics such as energy management, climate change adaptation and resilience, air quality, and health. In striving to improve relationships and connections between scientists and decision-makers, Ms. Sadoff convenes multi-directional stakeholder engagement activities such as advisory groups, information-sharing programs, and communities of practice, and facilitates focus sessions, workshops, and other co-production activities. She is currently serving as the Deputy Applications Coordinator for the PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) Mission out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Prior to this, she worked in the private sector consulting on environmental management capacity building domestically and around the world.
Chiara Cagnazzo
Dr. Cagnazzo is Sectoral Information System Manager at Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) ECMWF, where she addresses the challenge of transforming user needs in different sectors into usable climate-derived information. As a scientist, her prior research was dedicated to understanding the role of atmospheric variability and its representation in models on climate predictability at timescales from sub-seasonal to decadal, as well as on long-term projections. Dr. Cagnazzo received her PhD degree from the Polytechnique University of Paris in 2004.
Yann Michel
Dr. Michel is the Head of engineering division in the Meteo & Energy sector at Météo-France, where he manages a research and development team in the field of weather and climate services for the energy sector. Yann has a strong background in data assimilation for numerical weather prediction, and he received his PhD from the University of Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC) in 2008 in signal and image processing.
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