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7th Annual NOAA-CREST Symposium

April 27, 2011 - A two-day CREST Annual Symposium was organized by NOAA-CREST at Hampton University on April 27-28, 2011. More than 70 participants -- most of whom were CREST students and post-doctoral scientists -- attended the symposium.

The goal of the CREST annual symposium is to bring together the student and scientific community working on NOAA-related sciences at a national level science and education forum on Earth System Science with a special emphasis on remote sensing applications and related sciences.

Symposium participants share research results and have the opportunity to develop professional networks with scientists and educators from academai, industry, and NOAA and other federal agencies. 45 oral and 23 poster presentations were made during the two-day symposium on various research themes such as Air, Climate, Coastal Waters, Hydro-Climate, and Land-Hydrology throgh nine technical sessions.

The symposium kicked off with at 9:00 a.m. on April 27 with opening remarks by Dr. Pat McCormick, CREST Campus Principal Investigator and Hampton University and Dr. Pamela Hammond, Provost, Hampton University. Dr. Bradley Pierce from NOAA/NESDIS/STAR gave the keynote address on Chemical and Aerosol Data Assimilation studies, followed by Chantell Haskins from NOAA/OED/EPP, whose presentation was "The World of NOAA Scholarships and Opportunities -- An Overview". The opening session concluded with the CREST overview, presented by Dr. Reza Khanbilvardi, CREST Director.

The latter part of the day was filled with several other oral presentations under various technical sessions, followed by the students' poster session. The day concluded with a banquet at the Virginia Air and Space Museum.

The oral presentations continued on the second day under various sessions, including Satellite Calibration and Validation; Hydro-Climate; Climate Studies and Remote Sension Algorithm Development and Ocean and Coastal Ecosystem Monitoring.

The symposium concluded with closing remarks by Dr. Khanbilvardi and best students' awards presented by the CREST Advisory Board Chair Dr. Soroosh Sorooshian.

Alvaro Gonzalez, PhD student from CREST/CUNY won the first oral presentation award; with Debra Kollonige, doctoral student from CREST/UMBC and Estatio Gutierrez, doctoral student from CREST/CUNY won the second and the third prizes, respectively. Allen Lizarraga, a masters student from CREST/UPRM; Robert Lee and Christopher Spells, both doctoral students from CREST/HU won the first, second, and third poster presentation awards, respectively.