Current Lidar Team

Dr. Shane D. Mayor
Dr. Shane D. Mayor, Assistant Professor

2001 Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Mayor specializes in atmospheric lidar and boundary layer meteorology.

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Chris Mauzey

Chris Mauzey, Programmer and Research Assistant

2010 B.S. in Computer Science; California State University, Chico.

Chris began working in the lidar group in September 2010. He specializes in parallel processing.

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Tyson Randall

Tyson Randall, Graduate Student in Environmental Science.

2011 B.A. in Physics from UC Santa Barbara

Tyson joined the lidar team in January of 2012. He is studying canopy waves in the CHATS data.

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Masaki Hamada

Masaki Hamada, Graduate Student in Environmental Science.

2011 B.A. in Physics from CSU Chico
2014 M.S. in Environmental Science from CSU Chico

Masaki joined the lidar team in September of 2012. He is studying the performance of the cross-correlation algorithm for remote wind measurements.

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Christopher Hasek

Christopher Hasek, Graduate Student in Computer Science

2013 B.S. in Physics and Computer Science

Chris Hasek has worked in the lidar group since 2010. He has completed a number of projects to facilitate the display of REAL data.

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Ryan Clare

Ryan Clare, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Environmental Science

Ryan joined the lidar group in the summer of 2014.

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Jason Stockton

Jason Stockton, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Physics

Jason joined the lidar group in the summer of 2014.

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Dr. Paul Arpin

Dr. Paul Arpin, Lecturer

2012 Ph.D. in Physics from University of Colorado at Boulder.

Dr. Aprin began working in the group in June of 2014.

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Recent Graduates

Lena Heffern

Lena Heffern, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Physics, Mechanical Engineering; Graduation: May 2013.

Lena began working in the lidar group in September 2011 and is assisted with the mechanical engineering aspects of the REAL.

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William (Gabe) Vivas

William (Gabe) Vivas, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Mechanical Engineering; Graduation: May 2013.

Gabe joined the lidar team in May of 2012.

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Denton Scott

Denton Scott, Electrical Engineer

2011 B.S. in Electrical Engineering; Brigham Young University.
2012 M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering; California State University Chico.

Denton began working in the lidar group in October of 2011. He completed a master's degree in the CSU Chico Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

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Alan Rhoades

Alan Rhoades, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Environmental Science with Atmospheric Science option; Graduation: May 2012.

Alan worked briefly in the lidar team during the spring of 2012. He installed the WRF model on the Physics server. He is now a graduate student at UC Davis.

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Waleed Amjad

Waleed Amjad, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Computer Information Systems; Graduation : May 2011

Waleed worked in the lidar group from September to December of 2010. He processed REAL data from the 2004 deployment of REAL in Washington DC.

Waleed is now a software engineer for eBay.

Chris Van Hoosear

Chris Van Hoosear, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Mechatronic engineering and Computer engineering; Graduation: December 2010.

Chris Van Hoosear worked in lidar group from December through June of 2010. He began refurbishing the REAL's beam-steering unit and preparing it for new mirrors and field operation.

Chris is now a graduate student in Computer Engineering at University of the Pacific.

Terry McAfee

Terry McAFee, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Physics; Graduated: May 2010

Through PHYS 499, Terry developed a comprehensive understanding of the laser and optics in REAL. He helped set up the lidar at the University farm and moved all of the components from the old shipping container into the new one.

Terry is now a graduate student in the Dept. of Physics at NC State University.

Zeb Wheeler

Zeb Wheeler, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Computer science; Graduated: May 2010

Through PHYS 499, Zeb investigated whether the Horn and Schunck (1981) technique could be applied to lidar images to estimate vector motion fields. He also worked part-time to maintain the computer systems in the REAL lab.

Zeb now works for Cool Earth Solar.

Chris Griffo

Chris Griffo

Chico State Major: Physics; Graduated: May 2010

Chris Griffo helped set up the REAL at the university farm during the spring of 2009 and received credit through PHYS 499.

Chris is a grad student at CSU Fullerton and working with the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.

Former (or currently inactive) Lidar Team Members

Dr. Pierre Derian

Dr. Pierre Dérian, Post-doctoral Researcher

2012 Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from INRIA Rennes - Bretagne Atlantique.

Dr. Dérian worked in the lidar group from December 2012 through December of 2014. He specializes in wavelet-based optical flow.

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Scott Gimbal

Scott Gimbal, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Physics; Graduation: May 2014.

Scott is working with Dr. Anna Petrova-Mayor on polarization aspects of the REAL.

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Thomas Schwab

Thomas Schwab, Mechanical Engineer

2012 B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Thomas worked in the lidar group from February through June of 2013 on a variety of mechanical engineering projects. He is now a graduate student at Columbia University.

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Kevin Baker

Kevin Baker, Technician

2001 B.S. in Computer Information Systems; CSU, Chico.
1987 A.A. in Business Administration; Santa Barbara City College.
1985 A.S. in Electronic Technology; Santa Barbara City College.

Kevin works part-time to maintain the lidar facility and site at the university farm.

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Liz Jachens

Liz Jachens, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Civil Engineering; Graduation: May 2014.

Liz began working in the lidar group in May 2011. Her focus is on fine-scale atmospheric internal waves in the CHATS data.

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Jim Schafer

Jim Schafer, Graduate Student

2001 B.S. in Geoscience from CSU Chico

Jim worked in the lidar group from January of 2012 to January of 2013 on the depth of the convective boundary layer in the northern central California valley.

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Rex Belli

Rex Belli, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Physics; Graduation: December 2012.

Rex began working in the lidar group in September 2011 and is implementing algorithms to objectively identify the height of the convective boundary layer in the REAL RHI scans.

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Jen Lowe

Jen Lowe, Scientific Programmer; Data Analyst

Master's of Information Science; San Jose State University. B.S. in Applied Math; University of Arizona.

Jen worked in the Lidar Group from April of 2010 to February 2012. She wrote and used programs to process, analyze, and display the REAL data from CHATS.

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Forest Sears

Forest Sears, Student Research Assistant

Chico High School, Senior

Forest began working in the lidar group in March of 2011. He learned a wide variety of technical skills required in experimental lidar research. During the summer of 2011, Forest participated in the MITES program at MIT.

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Steven Sun

Steven Sun, Student Research Assistant

Chico High School, 10th grade

Steven worked in the lidar group in July of 2011. He created images from REAL CHATS data to investigate fine-scale atmospheric waves.

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Yibo Zhang

Yibo Zhang, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Physics; Graduation : May 2012

Yibo volunteered in the lidar group and learned how to write IDL programs.

William Meadows

William Meadows, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major: Computer Science, Applied Computer Graphics; Graduation: May 2012

During the spring and summer of 2010, Will developed and ran IDL programs to transform the REAL at CHATS data set into thousands of images and animations. Results of his project can be found at NSF Project Results.

Esmeralda F. Ramirez

Esmeralda F. Ramirez, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chico State Major:Journalism; Graduation: May 2012

Esmeralda produced graphics for journal articles and conference presentations; she designed the webpages and put content on them.

Esmeralda F. Ramirez

Shemu Nixon Ariyasivam

Chico State Major: Physics; Graduation: May 2011

Shemu helped set up the REAL at the University Farm and learned how the principles of the lidar transmitter works by taking PHYS 499.