Spotlight on: Jian Zhang

Jian Zhang has two children, Alice (6) and Andrew (2), whose names begin with "A" to compensate for a last name that begins with "Z." Their middle names contain the Chinese word for "rain." "Before children," Jian says she liked to go to movies, be outdoors, and drive long distances to see natural wonders. Now she likes to spend most of her time at home, playing with her children, reading, listening to classical music and taking walks to relax. Jian has been married for 15 years to Pengfei Zhang, a CIMMS employee who works on single Doppler wind retrieval.

Jian grew up on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau in Lanzhou, China, on the Yellow River, where early Chinese civilization began. She has a passion to explore ancient civilizations - she's amazed by how similar wisdom can come from vastly different cultures, especially cultures that existed thousands of years ago. Someday she hopes to travel to Europe and Africa and see the places she has read about.

Jian originally wanted a vocation in journalism, but her father convinced her to pursue the natural sciences -- leading to a more "serious" career. Her intrinsic appreciation for mathematics made it a comfortable choice. Jian's exceptional high school test scores gained her admittance into the prestigious Beijing University, where she earned her B.S. in atmospheric physics. During school, she was a host for the university radio station (news and entertainment). After graduating with her master's in atmospheric science degree from the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, she worked as a research associate in the National Satellite Meteorological Center for three years. On a visit to the U.S. to see her husband, Jian learned of a research project with Dick Doviak and moved to Oklahoma permanently in 1991 to work on her Ph.D.

Jian is haunted by a recurring nightmare: she is informed that she lacks six credit hours to graduate with her Ph.D. After an eight-year journey with two topic changes, Jian considers her Ph.D her biggest success. Her dissertation was on data assimilation, but her other areas of expertise include radar data analysis and applications and satellite data application. She was able to stay on at NSSL/CIMMS following her post doc with a USWRP project. She is currently working on radar Quantitative Precipitation Estimation (QPE) and related studies, hoping to submit a paper to the "Monthly Weather Review" on radar mosaic work. Jian likes knowing exactly how her work can be used in the forecast office -- it makes her job dynamic to know her efforts have a real-life purpose.