By Julianna Parker
The University of Oklahoma announced a collaborative agreement with Enterprise Electronics Corporation Tuesday to better detect and predict severe weather.
The $1.5 million collaboration is a significant step for OU's Strategic Radar Initiative, said John T. Snow, dean of the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences.
The initiative was started in 2004 by OU President David Boren to bring OU to the front of radar research. Several projects have been started since then, but this collaboration is something the university has wanted for a while, Snow said.
"We've kind of scattered the puzzle on the table and the pieces are starting to come together," he said.
EEC, a weather radar manufacturer, will work with the university to research and implement advanced weather-predicting techniques.
"It's just a perfect fit for what we're trying to accomplish with the strategic initiative for weather radar," Snow said.
The core aspect of the multi-year collaboration is the new radar OU recently contracted with EEC to build on the Research Campus by the end of the year. The $2.5 million C-band, high-resolution, dual polarization radar is the first of its kind in the U.S.
It's also the first radar entirely owned by OU, so students and faculty can take it apart or experiment with scanning methods, said Keith Brewster, Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms senior research scientist and adjunct associate professor.
"It was a big thing for the university to have a hands-on radar," he said.
With the new radar, the university will be able to experiment and research on three initial projects in the collaboration. EEC will financially sponsor the projects conducted by OU faculty and students and the results will be able to be implemented throughout the world on other EEC products.
"The work that is done here you will see in countries like Germany, parts of Africa, parts of the Amazon," said Chris Goode, vice president of marketing and business development for EEC.
That will benefit OU because students and faculty will be able to see their work implemented, said Tian-You Yu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and associate director of the Atmospheric Radar Research Center.
"I think we're really excited to realize our research project can be a commercial project," he said.
Goode said the partnership will help EEC, too. OU is internationally recognized for its weather radar research, so that will help EEC in its marketing, he said.
"We certainly like the ability to say, 'Hey, we partnered with OU in this collaborative effort,'" Goode said.
The three start-up projects in the collaboration focus on better severe weather detection and prediction.
Robert Palmer, ARRC director and meteorology professor, and Guifu Zhang, associate professor of meteorology, will lead research on advanced mathematical solutions for use with the EEC radar.
Brewster and Ming Xue, meteorology professor and CAPS director, will lead efforts to analyze atmospheric conditions and create numerical weather prediction models.
Yu will lead a project that will produce an advanced tornado detection system suitable for the NEXRAD National Weather Service radar network as well as other uses.
The advanced detection system is de-signed to provide forecasters the opportunity to issue earlier tornado warnings with a higher level of reliability than current systems.
The aim of the whole collaboration between OU and EEC is to improve weather detection and prediction to reduce the negative impact of severe weather.
"In the end, we want to mitigate the impact of these devastating tornadic effects," Yu said.
Goode agreed.
"You're talking about saving people's lives here and that's what we're trying to do..." he said.
Julianna Parker 366-3541 jparker@normantranscript.com
