Grad school should be more than research and classes, let's write a "playbook" of how the professional world work and how can we meet their expectations, let's get ready to join the workforce. Join us for three discussions where we’ll troubleshoot the "human" side of work and learn from each other's experiences.

1. Tuesday, March 24, at 12 PM (noon) in Commons 331.

 The Anatomy of Professionalism: Let’s talk about building a reputation for trust and reliability that speaks for itself.

2. Tuesday, April 14, at 12 PM (noon) in Commons 318. 

The Social Architect: A deep dive into "style-flexing" to help us navigate diverse, multi-cultural, and multi-generational teams.

3. Tuesday, April 28, at 12 PM (noon) in Commons 318.

Leading Without Authority: A collaborative session on how to steer a project or meeting effectively, even when you aren't the one in charge.

No lectures, just real talk and shared strategies. RSVPs are appreciated but not required. See you there!

Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash

Join us for a virtual seminar by Dr. Courtney Schumacher, Professor, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University. Her talk is titled "The Interacting Weather and Climate Drivers that Produce Extreme Rainfall over the Maritime Continent."

Date and Time: Tuesday, March 24, 2026 at 1:00pm EST

Join us via Teams.  

"This study provides a comprehensive assessment of the multiscale weather and climate drivers and their interactions that govern extreme daily rainfall across the Indonesian Maritime Continent (MC). Utilizing IMERG satellite data from 2000-2023, we first evaluate how the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), El Niño–Southern Oscillation, Indian Ocean Dipole, convectively-coupled equatorial waves, and meridional drivers like the Borneo Vortex modulate extreme rainfall in cities in the western, central, and eastern MC. Our findings indicate that while single drivers account for approximately one-third of extreme wet days, the majority of 95th percentile events are driven by multi-driver combinations that enhance humidity and winds, leading to longer-lasting storms. We further demonstrate that while traditional statistical and machine learning techniques struggle to capture the tail of rain rate distributions over the MC, overparameterized neural networks significantly improve the prediction of subdaily extreme rain rates, presumably because of their ability to capture the non-linear processes produced by the multiscale and interacting weather and climate drivers.In addition, we investigate the mechanisms and conditions that lead to the offshore rainfall maxima over the MC, a dominant feature of the region’s hydroclimatology. We employ a novel terrain-relative tracking algorithm over West Sumatra to characterize the properties of individual nocturnal offshore propagating rainfall events using IMERG data from 2018. Propagating systems only occur about a third of the days, but often last 7–10 hours and reach over 250 km from the coast. Event characteristics are shown to be dictated by local drivers, such as the land/sea breeze circulation, boundary layer processes, and gravity waves, but can also vary by MJO and monsoon phase due to changes in synoptic-scale flow. This work emphasizes the need to account for compound environmental conditions to improve extreme rainfall forecasting across the MC."

Biography:
Dr. Courtney Schumacher has been a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University since 2003. She received her undergraduate degree in Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and did her graduate work at the University of Washington. Her primary research revolves around understanding how convective storms become large and long lasting and how to improve predictions of rainfall and extreme rain events. Dr. Schumacher has been heavily involved in field campaigns throughout the tropics, including DYNAMO and GoAmazon, and is an active contributor to NASA’s satellite missions, both the implementation of current missions like PMM and the planning of next missions, including INCUS and the PBL Decadal Survey Incubation program. She was recognized as an AMS Fellow in 2019 and is the holder of the Earl Cook Professorship in Geosciences.

For more information on the GESTAR II Seminar Series, click here.

The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is conducting market research to identify qualified vendors capable of providing professional oral history videography, editing, and related services to support the Museum's Oral History Program.

not constitute a solicitation or request for proposal.

Organization Background

NMAAHC's Oral History Program documents, preserves, and interprets African American history through high quality, quality, born-digital audiovisual interviews. These interviews support museum exhibitions, educational programming, research, and digital preservation efforts. These interviews support museum exhibitions, educational programming, research, and digital preservation efforts. The Museum anticipates -requiring 800–1,500 hours of professional videography, editing, and related services during the period of performance.