DaNa L. Carlis, Ph.D. will be the recipient of NOAA’s EEO/Diversity Individual Award and 2018 OAR Employee of the Year Award in Leadership during the 2018 OAR Awards Ceremony
DaNa L. Carlis, Ph.D. will be the recipient of NOAA’s EEO/Diversity Individual Award and 2018 OAR Employee of the Year Award in Leadership during the 2019 OAR Awards Ceremony. The awards ceremony will be held on March 12, 2019 at 1:00 pm ET in NOAA’s Silver Spring Auditorium.
Background: DaNa L. Carlis, Ph.D. is a meteorologist and serves as a Program Manager at NOAA’s Office of Weather and Air Quality (OWAQ). At OWAQ, he manages the Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats (FACETs) and Next Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS) programs. Dr. Carlis has spent 16 years at NOAA and began his career as a graduate student in NOAA’s Graduate Sciences Program through the NOAA Office of Education. Soon after joining NOAA, Dr. Carlis was stationed in Honolulu, Hawaii for 3 years of intensive weather research, model development, and dissertation writing. He’s held positions at the National Weather Service as a weather forecast model (Global Forecast System Model) developer, as a policy advisor to NOAA senior leadership, and in 2016 joined NOAA Research as Weather Portfolio Advisor. Dr. Carlis has published papers in peer-reviewed journals and in 2016 wrote a children’s book titled “MIT: Meteorologist in Training.”
Dr. Carlis attended Howard University in Washington, DC where he obtained a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Chemistry (2000), as well as a MS (2002) and PhD (2007) in Atmospheric Sciences. In 2007, Dr. Carlis was the 2nd African American male to receive his PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from Howard University. His dissertation focused on modeling island-scale airflow regimes over Maui and implementing semi-operational MM5 and WRF models over the Hawaiian Islands. He is originally from Tulsa, OK where he developed a love for science and math at an early age. For his scientific achievements, Dr. Carlis was recently inducted into the Booker T. Washington High School Distinguished Hall of Fame Class of 2018, and he credits Booker T. Washington as an early inspiration to seriously pursue his education. In his spare time, Dr. Carlis enjoys cheering for his favorite sports team the Oklahoma Sooners, mentoring and coaching students, and spending time with his family. Dr. Carlis is married to Dr. Lydia Carlis, Founder of Eyemagination Enterprises LLC, and they have a 19 year old daughter, Dia Carlis who attends Georgia State University.
