Special Feature Karl Braganza Plenary Karl Braganza is currently the manager of Climate Monitoring at the Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre. The Climate Monitoring section is responsible for the preparation, analysis and reporting of Australia’s climate record. Karl received his PhD from the School of Mathematics at Monash University and his research work has centred on understanding and attributing climate variability and change.
Dr John Church Plenary John Church is a CSIRO Fellow with the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research. His area of expertise is the role of the ocean in climate, particularly anthropogenic climate change. He is an expert in estimating and understanding global and regional sea-level rise. He is the author of over 130 refereed publications, over 80 other reports and co-edited three books. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and the American Meteorological Society.
Beth Ebert Plenary (AMOS R.H. Clarke Lecture) Beth Ebert leads the Weather and Climate Information Program in the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR) in the Bureau of Meteorology. Her research interests include diagnostic forecast verification methods, satellite precipitation estimation, and ensemble prediction.
Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 28 page 39
Dr. Ebert co-chaired the WWRP/WGNE Joint Working Group on Forecast Verification Research and is a member of the WWRP Joint Scientific Committee. She received her Ph.D. in Meteorology in 1987 from the University of Wisconsin.
Yi Huang Plenary (AMOS Uwe Radok Award 2014) Yi Huang is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University. She got her B.S. in Atmospheric Science in 2007, M.S. in Meteorology in 2009, both from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. She was the winner of the University’s “Scholarship of Excellence”, “Panasonic Scholarship for Top Students”, and “Outstanding Bachelor Thesis”. Yi commenced her Ph.D. at Monash University in 2009, working with A/Prof. Steve Siems and Prof. Michael Manton. Her thesis titled “Observation and Simulations of Cloud Thermodynamic Phase over the Southern Ocean” provides new insights in addressing the biases currently found in climate models over the poorly understood Southern Ocean. Her research has produced three first-author, high-quality publications, which are repeatedly cited in the white paper for “Southern Ocean Clouds Radiation and Aerosols Transport Experimental Studies (SOCRATES)” that has been recently submitted to the US National Science Foundation.
Sophie Lewis Plenary (AMOS Early Career Research Award 2014) Sophie is a Research Fellow in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She investigates Australian weather and climate extremes, including heatwaves, heavy rainfall and drought. Her primary research looks at the changes in the likelihood of extreme climate events due to anthropogenic climate change using climate models. Sophie completed her PhD at The Australian National University in 2011.