PROUD Award - Excellence in Action: Michelle Harrold, Associate Scientist IV, NSF NCAR RAL & DTC

Performance Recognition for OUtstanding DTC achievements (PROUD) Award
May 22, 2024

Michelle Harrold is an Associate Scientist IV with the NSF NCAR Research Applications Laboratory where she is a lead for the Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS) Agile Framework and Air Force project teams and contributes to the Ensemble project and others outside the DTC.

Michelle has provided critical leadership, subject-matter expertise, and task contributions related to verification and numerous other DTC tasks during the current and past AOP. Her extensive knowledge of observation and model data processing, general verification techniques and metrics, as they relate to meteorological phenomena, METplus, and METviewer, have been critical to the success of all her projects, and have elevated the impacts of findings for project stakeholders.

Michelle has excelled in her leadership of the RRFS Agile Framework task and is constantly willing to help others learn, providing assistance and opportunities for staff to gain new skills and become engaged with the work. She also regularly volunteers to contribute to task work during team meetings, which is a major reason why the deliverables are always completed successfully.

Aside from an amazing work ethic, Michelle also easily connects with other team members and ensures communication between individual staff members and across nodes is optimal. Her critical thinking and general expertise are often why we can resolve unexpected roadblocks during the AOP, but more importantly, it also helps shape the science we do, how we evaluate results, and the positive impacts we deliver to stakeholders.

Michelle is a versatile member of the DTC who produces timely and quality work, all while excelling in her leadership duties and mentoring other staff. We are very fortunate to have her in the DTC!