Zachary Vozzelli

• Leads 13 personnel in the proactive integration of 24/7/365 environmental intelligence into the mission sets of 4 major Department of Defense units with missions around the world, including a U.S. Navy Nuclear and a U.S. Air Force Homeland Defense alert missions.
• Senior meteorologist to installation decision-makers, including 2 General Officers. Ensures non-stop atmospheric situational awareness is efficiently messaged to commanders and operators based on mission requirements to ensure the protection of 32K installation personnel and $15.4B in assets.
• Oversees summer meteorology internship program in partnership with local universities. Advises interns through mission-impact focused climate and weather research projects (3 research projects to date). Research aimed at identifying long and short-term teleconnection interactions that pose the greatest threat of significant weather events in the U.S. central plains and continuous improvement of impact-based forecasts to installation decision-makers.
• Led weather flight personnel to 35 individual awards and 4 team awards, including recognition/praise from 6x General Officers. Earned Air Force Material Command (4-Star Command) Weather Officer of the Year 2022.

• Managed the integration of environmental intelligence into all military operations across the 7.5 million Sq mi. Africa and the Red Sea regions. Oversaw 21 forecasters across 3 service branches and U.S. Special Operations Command.
• Led research and development of a Department of Defense first product that provided a comprehensive forecast of atmospheric impacts to ground-based and satellite early warning radar systems. Worked with end-users and system subject matter experts to tailor products and impacts to the specific electromagnetic frequencies used with alternate courses of action based on atmospheric conditions. This product has been adopted by intelligence and weather forces across Africa and the Middle East for U.S. and allied defense.
• Coordinated with 9 U.S. Department of State embassies in Africa and their local governments to ship and install $200K worth of weather observing and detection equipment to bolster support for potential embassy evacuations in an incredibly data-sparse central Africa. This increased data coverage is shared with partner African nations in an effort to better build climate databases, strengthen climate projections in these climate-vulnerable countries, and forge scientific ties with allies.

• Lead 35-member operations floor in 24/7/365 support to 155 Department of Defense locations across the Southeast U.S. providing resource protection to 240K personnel and $315B in assets
• Managed and quality checked 250 daily weather products in support of all military operations in the region including aerodrome forecasts, model data, significant weather notifications, and tropical outlooks.
• Led coordination on every major DoD exercise hosted within the area of responsibility. Ensured environmental intelligence was efficiently utilized when planning and executing the exercises for U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, and foreign military partners.
• Guided multiple teams in regional level severe weather and aviation-impact research in support of the Department of Defense. Drove best practices for forecasts to optimize impact-based communication and resulted in removing 2-hours daily in forecast redundancies.
• Earned Superior Performer on multiple exercises and Weather Squadron weather officer of the year for 2019.

• Viticultural research intern tasked with focusing on ultra-fine scale modeling of evapotranspiration within vineyards in north and central California.
• Work with a team comprised of University of California - Davis and members from the Viticulture department at E&J Gallo taking weekly in-situ leaf moisture observations from multiple vineyards in the region and cross-referencing with remote sensing tools to automate the water vapor transport models between vines.
• Utilized ArcGIS for modeling of leaf water content and fog lines to provide ranch owners decision-quality products to better plan for water resources amid a worsening California drought.
• Delivered an automated tool based on ArcGIS to predict wildfire spread once initiation occurred based on wind, humidity, topography and soil moisture. Product briefed to the CEO and received praise for the ability to provide resource protection to the ranch managers during the historic 2017 northern California wildfires.

• Applied Science Research Internship through the NASA Develop program but was based at the National Center for Environmental Intelligence.
• Goal of the project was to fill the spatial void between the sparse precipitation measuring ground station network in the United States Affiliated Pacific Islands. This will create a mosaic of NASA GPM derived precipitation estimates compared to 30-year PERSIANN-CDR normal.
• Presented research at 2017 AMS conference.

End Deliverables (utilizing Python code and ArcGIS):

• Verification of TRMM/GPM to PERSIANN and ground stations
• Seasonal anomaly maps of the region beginning in December 2015 to present (updated every 3 months).
• Online Virtual Station map for all 22 stations in the West Pacific, affording end-users "click-to-see" 90-day climatology/ observed rainfall as a line graph - updated every 3 months.
• Haywood line plots of stations around the region showing observed rainfall, 30-year climatological normal, and El Nino/ La Nina climatological normal.
• All of this information given to forecasters in the USAPI in order to enhance decision making in mitigating drought and flooding concerns.
• Capstone presentation of work to top meteorologists and climatologists within NCEI at the Southeast regional closeout for the summer term.