We are excited to announce Monica Youngman as the new Chief Scientist in the NWS Office of Science and Technology Integration! Monica joined the National Weather Service on February 12, 2024.

The STI Chief Scientist is a new position that will lead strategy and planning for research, development, and operational integration efforts for science and technology improvements across the NWS. The primary goal of this position is to analyze requirements for service improvements from NWS field offices and National Centers through close coordination with the Analyze, Forecast and Support Office (AFSO), partners within NOAA, and with the external research community. 

The STI Chief Scientist will work directly for the Director of OSTI, providing advice on scientific program direction for NWS and ensuring research and development activities are of the highest quality and integrity and meet mission requirements. These activities require a robust understanding of the synergy of science, engineering, numerical weather prediction, artificial intelligence algorithms, data, cloud computing, and social, behavioral, and economic science needs.

In addition, Monica has been selected as the NWS Lead and Point of Contact on Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) Initiatives. She will work closely with the NWS Chief of Staff to ensure alignment and execution of our AI/ML initiatives and lead the development of an AI/ML Roadmap that connects to our Ops Model and IT Infrastructure Roadmaps.

Monica comes to NWS from NESDIS' National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), where she was Chief of their Data Stewardship Division. In this role, Monica led the ongoing evaluation of data science research and development of innovative decision support tools, specifically investigating and developing new Cloud strategies, technologies, and architectures to support the management, integration, and delivery of diverse NOAA environmental and social science data.

Over her 14-year career at NOAA, Monica has successfully led assessments of emerging science and technologies, evaluated scientific program direction, and coordinated applied research and development across a variety of disciplines.

As the acting lead of the NESDIS Enterprise Proving Ground (June 2023-February 2024), Monica drove the creation and implementation of an enterprise process to 1) leverage and prioritize user needs with traceability to operational improvements and 2) promote user feedback, co-development, and readiness activities to achieve the greatest societal outcomes. While serving as the Gravity Program Manager (2015-2018) inside NOS' National Geodetic Survey (NGS), Monica provided technical leadership to research and develop methods for processing and evaluating airborne gravity data, and integrating it with satellite and in situ data, to improve the U.S. height system to accurately represent water flow.

Monica was a Presidential Management Fellow (2009-2011) in NGS and an Economic Analyst for Fundación Natura Bolivia (2008-2009). She has a Masters in Environmental Management with a focus on Environmental Economics from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, as well as Bachelor’s degrees in physics and political science from Iowa State University.

Welcome to the NWS, Monica!