NERTO Outcomes:

Working with federal machines (I have a computer science related background) and familiarizing oneself with the nature of government processes prepares one in working with NOAA.

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Value of NERTO to the Line Office:

To provide the opportunity to work with experts on the GOES-R series Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and automatically identify image artifacts. The first of these artifacts will be the degraded imagery during the too warm “Loop Heat Pipe” issue. This is an on-orbit anomaly where the sensitive infrared detectors are cold as designed. The degradation happens at certain times of the year and day and various for the spectral bands. Ideally, other image artifacts will be included as well. These include artifacts that look like “shark fins” or “caterpillar tracks”. Right now, we can only make statements such as “most images don’t have any artifacts”. However, with a machine learning approach, the plan is to integrate most of the multi-year archive. These GOES experts are located in Madison, WI, but the internship will be virtual.

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NERTO Skills:

YES, I learned how to be bold. Expressing my wish for a job during one work meeting was opportune as one member mentioned someone in private industry who contracts for NOAA was seeking a software engineer.