Nir Barnea was born in Israel in 1956. Nir’s father, Daniel Barnea, survived the Holocaust, while his grandparents were deported and killed in Auschwitz in 1945.  Nir graduated in 1974 from Har Vagai High School in Upper Galilee, Israel, and served in the Israel Defense Forces until 1977.  Nir immigrated to the United States and earned his BS in Microbiology from the University of Washington, in Seattle.  He continued his graduate education at UW, earning a master’s degree in Environmental Health.  Nir is also a Certified Industrial Hygienist.

Phillip Levin was born in Champaign, IL in 1962. He studied at the University of Texas receiving his Bachelor's in Zoology. During college, a fish class led to his interest in marine biology and field work. After teaching marine science at a San Antonio high school, he attended the University of New Hampshire where he received his PhD in Zoology. He then was an Assistant Professor at Texas A & M before he joined NOAA Fisheries at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in 1999 as a Research Fisheries Biologist.

Dr. Richard Methot grew up in western Massachusetts. He attended the University of Washington and received a bachelor'sdegree from the College of Fisheries. Following graduation, Dr. Methot went to Scripps Institution of Oceanography where he earned his Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography in 1981. After a one year postdoc at Bodega Marine Laboratory, he began working for NOAA that same year at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in LaJolla, CA. In 1988, he moved to the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, WA.

Topics include: how he came to be involved in meteorology; education; time in the Navy; work at MIT; American Meteorological Society; radio casting; industrial meteorology; terms as president-elect, president and past president of AMS; changes technology made to meteorology; forecasting; Center for Operational Meteorological Education and Training (COMET); UCAR; Jim Mahoney; blending meteorology with other sciences; China; Harry Geise; weather modification; Ken Spengler; NCAR.

Oral history interview with Robert Fleagle, 1990. 

Copyright Information: Copyright University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Robert Kope was born in Reedley, California in 1953. He received his PhD in Population Ecology from the University of California Davis and began working for NOAA Fisheries at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in1989.His work has focused on stock assessments, harvest management, and conservation biology of salmon in northern California. In 1994, Robert moved to the Northwest Fisheries Science Center to participate in the coast-wide status review of all Pacific salmon species under the Endangered Species Act.

Robin Waples was born in Berkeley, California. He received a Bachelor’s degree in American studies from Yale University and his Ph.D. in marine biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 1986, Waples joined the Northwest Fisheries Science Center as a National Research Council Research Associate. From 1997 to 2000 he was the Director of the Conservation Biology Division. In 2001, he became the center's Senior Scientist. His research interests include population genetics of anadromous and marine fishes.

Dr. Rohinee Paranjpye was born in Pune, India in 1955 and has been working at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center as a microbiologist since 1979. As part of a microbiology product quality and safety team, she helped improve the safety and marketability of fishery products by identifying hazards in seafood. She also researches the role of abiotic and biotic environmental factors on the presence of marine pathogens in order to develop improved risk assessment tools for early warning systems. Rohinee has a B.S. in Chemistry from India, a B.S.

Tiffani Marsh was born in Warren, Ohio in 1956. She received her B.A. in Zoology from Miami University. She began her career at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in 1990 studying salmon migration patterns. She is now a Supervisory Research Fishery Biologist in the Fish Ecology Division.

Dr. Varanasi had a notable career as the science and research director of NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center, where she served from 1994 and became the first woman to lead a fisheries field office. She dedicated over 30 years to applying chemistry to address critical biological questions and enhance environmental policy. After retiring from NOAA, she contributed to the University of Washington's College of the Environment and was involved in collaborative efforts between NOAA and the Ministry of Earth Sciences in India.