Keynote Speaker for the conference is Tim Marshall. Tim attended Northern Illinois University at DeKalb, attaining a B.S. degree majoring in meteorology in 1978. As an undergraduate student there, he and classmates surveyed some tornado damage paths of the 1974 Super Outbreak during informal travels to the National Climatic Data Center to collect severe weather data. Marshall went to Texas for graduate school, seeing his first tornado a few hours after entering the state. In 1978, he began storm chasing in west Texas and Oklahoma. During the past 30 years, Tim has filmed more than 200 tornadoes and experienced 17 hurricanes. In 2004, he rode out Hurricane Ivan in Pensacola, Florida and, in 2005, Tim rode out Hurricane Katrina in Slidell, Louisiana. In 2008, Tim saw Hurricane Ike on Galveston Island. Tim has appeared on dozens of television programs including those on The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, National Geographic, and The History Channel. He has been on The Oprah Winfrey Show twice.
Dr. Philip J. Klotzbach is a research associate currently working at Colorado State University. He designed the United States Landfalling Hurricane Probability Webpage which has received over 500,000 hits since its inception on June 1, 2004. His research interests include seasonal hurricane prediction and causes of climate change.He has been a member of Dr. William Gray's team for five years and has been co-authoring the group's forecasts since December 2001. After the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, he took over as lead author for the group's seasonal, monthly, and landfall forecasts on tropical cyclones.
Dr. Hatim Sharif is an assistant professor at the Unversity of Texas at San Antonio, B.S. Civil Engineering, University of Khartoum; M.S. Water Resources, Colorado State Univeersity; Ph.D. Environmental Engineering, University of Conneticut. His training also includes an Advanced Study Program postdoctoral fellowship at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. His research interests include hydrometeorology, water resources, land-atmosphere interaction, remote sensing and the interaction between climate, water, and health. His research projects in these areas are supported by national and state agencies including NASA and NOAA. Dr. Sharif teaches courses in Water Resources Engineering, Hydrometeorology, Global Change, Advanced Hydrology and Geographic Information Systems.
