Dr. W. Wallace McMillan was recently promoted to Assistant Professor in the Physics Department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and is affiliated with the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology at UMBC. For the past four years at UMBC, his research activities have focused on tropospheric chemistry and dynamics of carbon monoxide (CO); observations of upper tropospheric water vapor; the development of pre-flight calibration bench-tests for NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS); and the development of the AIRS validation plan. He is a Researcher member of the Science Team for the Interferometric Monitor for Greenhouse Gases (IMG) instrument onboard the Japanese ADvanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS) and has been active in the preparation of validation activities for the Measurement Of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument scheduled to fly on the EOS-AM-1 satellite in June 1998. Dr. McMillan is Principal Investigator for a NASA proposal, "Validation of MOPITT Column and Profile CO from Spaceborne, Airborne, and Ground-based Interferometers," recently selected for funding by NASA as part of the EOS validation effort.
Dr. McMillan has developed an extensive familiarity with the University of Wisconsin-Madison's High-resolution Interferometer Sounder (HIS) and Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI) during his development, testing, and validation of a prototype AIRS CO retrieval algorithm. In support of this validation, in the summer of 1995 he coordinated the acquisition of in situ CO, O3, and H2O measurements during the Second Convection And Moisture EXperiment (CAMEX2) field experiment at NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility . Dr. McMillan also has been active in the planning for CAMEX3 scheduled to be based from Patrick Air Force Base in late summer 1998. While CAMEX3 is envisioned as primarily a mission to observe hurricanes, we hope to acquire substantial measurements with a unique complement of instruments to assist our validation of spectroscopic and forward models for AIRS.
During the summer of 1996 Dr. McMillan served as a Mission Scientist with the North American Research Strategy for Tropospheric Ozone-Northeast in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Doddridge of the University of Maryland College Park and was responsible for arranging aircraft flight plans and performing in situ measurements of CO, O3, and H2O from an instrumented Cessna. Prior to coming to UMBC, Dr. McMillan spent two years in the Planetary Systems Branch of the Laboratory for Extraterrestrial Physics at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center as a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow developing and testing atmospheric temperature and dust retrieval algorithms for Mariner 9 and Mars Observer thermal emission spectra.
He is an active member of the American Geophysical Union, Optical Society of America, and the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. Dr. McMillan received his Ph. D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from The Johns Hopkins University in 1992 with a Masters degree from JHU in 1990. In 1985, he graduated cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa with a B.S. in Physics from Rhodes College (formerly Southwestern At Memphis).
Last modified September 17, 1997 3:00 PM