2026 News & Events

Dr. Rebecca (Becky) Schwantes receives a 2025 OAR Employee of the Year award recognizing her "for exceptional leadership in advancing NOAA OAR science by unifying research efforts, leading the development of innovative community modeling tools, and mentoring the next generation of scientists."

Dr. Schwantes has had an immediate and sustained impact on the direction of NOAA OAR research. Her exemplary leadership has been the driving force behind numerous initiatives, directly contributing to NOAA's mission and its fulfillment of congressional mandates outlined in the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017. The Act mandates that the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) conduct a program to improve the understanding of and forecast capabilities for atmospheric events and their impacts, with a priority on developing more accurate, timely, and effective warnings and forecasts of high-impact weather events. Her work directly supports this mandate through exceptional accomplishments:

• Improving Air Quality Prediction and Forecasting: Dr. Schwantes is the CSL lead for the development of the UFS-Chem (Unified Forecasting System with Chemistry) model, a multi-OAR laboratory and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) effort to unify atmospheric chemistry within NOAA's UFS framework. Her leadership has already resulted in a submitted paper on UFS-Chem version 1.0, a major milestone for the team. Dr. Schwantes' work on UFS-Chem is critical for achieving NOAA leadership's vision of unifying the nation's modeling capabilities under the UFS, which directly supports forecasts on air quality and fire weather.
• Facilitating Research to Operations and Collaborating with the Weather Enterprise: Dr. Schwantes facilitates technology transfer to ensure the continuous transition of scientific and technological advances into National Weather Service operations. She was the lead for the development of MELODIES-MONET, a new model diagnostic tool that easily and quickly evaluates atmospheric models against earth observations. The release of MELODIES-MONET version 1.0 was a major milestone, making core evaluation processes available for researchers and developers. The tool was used during the development of NOAA's new operational air quality forecast model (UFS-AQM) to quantify and reduce model biases. She mentored a NOAA Hollings undergraduate student to include meteorological observations in the diagnostic package. This effort directly supports advancing numerical weather prediction systems and forecasting tools by grounding models with atmospheric observations. Dr. Schwantes has actively built the MELODIES-MONET community through presentations and tutorials. She also co-organized and co-convened conferences to bring the community together to advance atmospheric chemistry and share NOAA's scientific advances.
• Advancing the Fundamental Understanding of Air Quality: Dr. Schwantes advances the fundamental understanding of weather, including atmospheric chemistry and interactions essential for accurate characterization and prediction. Dr. Schwantes' work as a co-PI of the Atmospheric Emissions and Reactions Observed from Megacities to Marine Areas (AEROMMA) airborne field campaign and overarching AGES+ field activities directly exemplifies this. Her leadership in data analysis and coordination resulted in a significantly improved understanding of urban air quality and transport of Canadian wildfire smoke. She is the corresponding author on a published paper that added new emerging emissions and chemistry from cooking to a model, which led to an improved understanding of urban air quality by demonstrating significant reductions in simulated surface ozone with evolving vehicle emission technologies. This work directly contributes to the goal of improving the understanding of how atmospheric chemistry processes affect air quality.

Dr. Schwantes' impact extends beyond her direct research contributions. She is a dedicated mentor to a diverse group of emerging scientists, including NOAA science advisees, a National Research Council (NRC) postdoctoral researcher, a NOAA Hollings undergraduate student, and a NOAA Lapenta graduate student. Her mentorship has directly contributed to significant research progress and several co-authored publications. She is a prolific communicator, giving numerous presentations at major scientific conferences to share NOAA's scientific advances with the broader community.

Dr. Schwantes has demonstrated extraordinary leadership and initiative in her early career stage. She has earned the trust and respect of scientists across NOAA OAR and with other federal partners. By leading large-scale projects, mentoring the next generation of scientists, and unifying research efforts, she embodies the spirit of an OAR Employee of the Year.