Robert (aka, 'Rob'), is a U.S. career-service civilian government employee with past positions at the NOAA - National Weather Service (NWS) and NOAA - National Ocean Service. Currently living in Barcelona, Spain where he is pursuing a doctoral degree in Environmental Engineering at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (BarcelonaTech).

The PhD project focus is utilizing remote sensing methods (lidar, satellites) to evaluate air quality models over the European domain. Rob is one of eleven early-stage researchers in the European Union funded, Initial Training for Atmospheric Remote Sensing (ITaRS) network. See more information about the project and the ITaRS network at:

http://itars.uni-koeln.de/index.php/user-profile/userprofile/rbanks

Research interests include planetary boundary-layer dynamics, air quality modelling, remote sensing of land and oceans, air-sea interactions, and marine meteorology, including high wind and wave events.

Prior to moving to Barcelona, Rob worked as a Meteorologist - Marine Forecaster at the NWS NCEP Ocean Prediction Center (OPC) in College Park, MD at a GS-12 level. OPC is responsible for marine weather forecasts, analyses, and warnings for large portions of the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans.

While at NOAA, temporary assignments included cross-training at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, Florida and a NOAA rotational assignment at the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing Systems (IOOS) program office in Silver Spring, MD.