Sam TrahanI am a hurricane researcher, dessert artist and programmer who is working on a Ph.D. in atmospheric physics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, studying under Lynn Sparling. In addition, I work part-time for the US government's Environmental Modeling Center, helping in the development of the 2010 HWRF model (a supercomputer program used for hurricane prediction). My thesis research and job take up most of my time, but I do have a little bit of free time. I spend most of my free time inventing new cheesecakes and vegan desserts, harassing random friends or coding for amusement. My thesis research is in the field of atmospheric physics, specifically hurricane inner core dynamics. Hurricane inner core dynamics is the study of the inner core region of hurricanes. Generally, the inner core region is considered to be the eye, eyewall (or eyewalls) and innermost rainbands. Specifically, I am studying various mesoscale (small) flow patterns in real and simulated hurricanes. My intent is to determine how well current numerical hurricane simulators represent these small features. Most importantly, I will be determining what one loses by performing a low-resolution simulation that cannot explicitly resolve the features. This research is partly supported by a grant from Teragrid, and also by a past fellowship from GEST. My thesis research is not my only research. I also spend time inventing new cheesecakes and low-fat vegan desserts to mail to my various friends and cousins. These masterpieces that I have created were partly designed by my chief cooking advisor, Deborah Kollonige, another graduate student in the same program as I. I'm hoping to add a few webpages on this site with recipes for these amazing creations, but that will have to wait until I have some free time. Links
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