Weather-Climate Enterprise

Matthew T. Barnett is the Vice President of New York Electric Operations for National Grid, leading an organization of more than 1,800 employees responsible for electric utility operations, construction, maintenance, and emergency response activities associated with serving 1.6 million customers across 25,000 square miles in Upstate New York.   He is a former Officer and member of Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation’s Board of Directors, serves as the State Incident Commander for Electric emergency response, and is the lead electric operations regulatory contact for the company with the New York Department of Public Service.  In addition, he has led several key projects including acting as a Lead Electric Witness in rate case filings, managing supply chain interruption mitigation and the serving as the company’s US COVID-19 vaccine mandate Operations lead.  Prior to his present position, Mr. Barnett has held various managerial and operations positions with National Grid since 2006. Mr. Barnett holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University and a Master of Business Administration from Union College.  He serves on Clarkson University’s Engineering Advisory Board as well as the University at Albany Center for Weather Excellence External Advisory Board.  

Mr. Barnett lives in Burnt Hills, NY with his wife and three daughters and his primary work location is based in the company’s Albany, NY office. 

Linking extreme weather and climate to economic impact has been the core of Steve Bennett’s professional journey for over 20-years. His career began as a meteorologsit in newspapers, radio and television, including time at The Weather Channel. He went on to focus his career by linking extreme weather and natural disasters to financial impact at Enron and Citadel where he led projects in energy, agriculture, insurance, reinsurance, and equity valuations. Steve went on to build and lead the team that developed software to identify climate risks to global supply chain operations. During this time, he worked closely with Apple, Unilever, ABInBev, 7-Eleven, MillerCoors, Ross Stores, and many others. Steve co founded The Demex Group in 2020 to develop insurance and capital markets solutions for global leaders in reinsurance and risk management that are focused on climate risk. As the co-founder of two start-ups, Steve has significant experience turning vision into action and catalyzing diverse groups to solve intricate problems. Steve holds an undergraduate degree in Meteorology from the University of South Alabama and a Law degree from the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. He is also former chair of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Financial Weather and Climate Risk Management.  

Christopher A. Fiebrich is the Executive Director of the Oklahoma Mesonet and Associate Director of the Oklahoma Climatological Survey at the University of Oklahoma. He is also Adjunct Faculty with the School of Meteorology at OU. His areas of expertise are in mesoscale meteorology and climatology, meteorological instrumentation, and applied meteorology and climatology. He oversees all activities of the Oklahoma Mesonet, including sensor calibrations, field operations, technology and software development, data and climate services, research, and outreach to emergency managers, fire fighters, farmers, and K-20 educators.     
 
He earned his B.S. in 1998, M.S. in 2000, and Ph.D. in Meteorology in 2007 from the University of Oklahoma. His dissertation was awarded the Dissertation Medal for 2009 from the American Association of State Climatologists (AASC). He is a Steering Committee member of the AASC Mesonet committee and a Certified Consulting Meteorologist of the American Meteorological Society. He has co-authored 33 peer reviewed publications and over 40 conference presentations. 

Dr. Sue Ellen Haupt is a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Deputy Director of its Research Applications Laboratory (RAL). She is also a Contributing and Founding Director of the World Energy and Meteorology Council (WEMC) and a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), where she currently serves as Commissioner of the Commission on the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise. She earned her Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from the University of Michigan, M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, M.S. in Engineering Management from Western New England College, B.S. in Meteorology from Penn State, and did a postdoctoral fellowship with the Advanced Study Program of NCAR. She has also been on the faculty of the The Pennsylvania State University, University of Colorado/Boulder; the U.S. Air Force Academy (visiting); University of Nevada, Reno; and Utah State University and previously worked for the New England Electric System and GCA Corporation. 

Dr. Haupt is an expert in boundary layer meteorology, large-scale atmospheric dynamics, applications of artificial intelligence in the environmental sciences, renewable energy, dynamical systems, numerical methods, and computational fluid dynamics. Her specialty is in applying novel numerical techniques to problems in the environmental sciences in both basic and applied research.  She enjoys teaching and mentoring graduate students as well as developing and directing research programs and projects. 

Everette Joseph is the Director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).