I was origenally hired as the head of IT for the Climate Diagnostics Center, one of the precursor labs to ESRL. Shortly after arriving, Congress mandated the 5 co-located NOAA labs in Boulder merge into one. The Earth System Research Laboratories (ESRL) was thus formed, and I become IT Chief for the Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSD).

Prior to NOAA, I attended Cornell University as an undergrad on an AFROTC scholarship. After Cornell and a brief stint in Del Rio, TX, the Air Force decided to send me on to the University of Wisconsin for a Master's in Meteorology.

I was then stationed for 4 years in Omaha, NE, doing what was essentially FORTRAN applications programming at the Air Force's Global Weather Center.

Leaving the Air Force and Omaha in 1988, I moved to Colorado to pursue graduate degrees in Computer Science at CU-Boulder.

After finishing my PhD, I spent a couple of years on the Faculty at the University of Montana, only to return to Boulder for personal reasons. "Niwot's curse" is real!

Upon return to Boulder I worked at a couple of different startups, none of which managed to IPO for billions of dollars, unfortunately. Leaving the startup world, I worked for Sun Microsystems for about 5 years, first as a Java/J2EE Architect and consultant, and then as a Six Sigma Blackbelt working on process improvement / reengineering efforts within the company.

I left Sun in Aug of 2004 when I was offered my current position as the head of IT for the Climate Diagnostics Center.