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Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research
1315 East-West Highway
Silver Spring, MD 20910
301-713-2458
About the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes
Dr. Alexander (Sandy) MacDonald
Dr. MacDonald is Deputy Assistant Administrator for Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes for NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. He concurrently serves as Director of the Earth System Research Laboratory, in Boulder, Colorado. A Montana native, Dr. MacDonald’s interest in weather began at age eight, when his mother gave him a subscription to Scientific American, and he became fascinated with a nearby weather disaster. He earned Bachelor of Science degrees in Mathematics and Physics from Montana State, before joining the U.S. Air Force as an officer, serving from 1967 to 1971.
After the service, Dr. MacDonald earned both his Master of Science degree and Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Utah. Knowing that he wanted to work in the atmospheric sciences and determining that NOAA conducted the best science in this area, Dr. MacDonald sought a position at the newly formed agency (1970), beginning his career with NOAA’s National Weather Service’s Western Region in 1973. While at the NWS, he received a bronze medal for his work on the automated weather information system.
Dr. MacDonald’s leadership role in NOAA began in the 1980s when he led a group within NOAA’s research laboratories that developed and tested systems to bring data streams and models together for operational forecasters. He led the research/development group, later the Forecast System Laboratory (FSL), until his present assignment, and received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award for his role in the development of the National Weather Service AWIPS (Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System) model in 1993.
Dr. MacDonald’s contributions to the science of weather and climate include bringing parallel computing to FSL, which led to the development, installation and operation of a High-Performance Computing System called JET; developing a new, unique mesoscale weather prediction model; and originating the idea of diagnosis of three-dimensional water vapor using a GPS (Global Positioning System). His work in the White House with Vice President Al Gore to start the GLOBE program, an educational web-based program involving classrooms worldwide in atmospheric sciences, earned him the Distinguished Presidential Rank Award in 1998.
In the new century, Dr. MacDonald invented a unique way of showcasing NOAA science. His Science on a Sphere™ – a multimedia system using high-speed computers, advanced imaging techniques, and strategically placed projectors to display full-color animated images of satellite, geophysical and astronomical data on a sphere – is being placed in museums and science centers across the U.S. More recently, Dr. MacDonald is leading efforts within NOAA to use Unmanned Aircraft Systems to improve the accuracy of weather and climate predictions.
Dr. MacDonald lives in Boulder with his wife, Susan, and enjoys spending time with six young grandchildren. He maintains a collection of Scientific American magazines that extends back to 1953, and can relate the family story about the terrible rains and overflowing creek that overran his uncle’s Montana ranch, and how his uncle strung a rope from his house up a hill and had to carry his children out in the middle of the night through the raging water. Dr. MacDonald is still fascinated with weather and is dedicated to improving forecasts at all time scales, from severe local storms to predictions of changes in the world’s climate.
