73^rd Annual Honor Award Recipients

Individual Gold Medal – Leadership

Ko Barrett

For championing and serving as the lead communicator for the highly influential IPCC Special Report on Oceans and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

Individual Gold Medal – Personal and Professional Excellence

Andy Mathews

For successful prosecution of the largest biological and economically impactful IFQ fishery criminal case ever completed by NOAA OLE AKD.

Organizational Gold Medal – Personal and Professional Excellence

NOAA’s Aircraft Operations Center

For executing critical aviation missions in support of NOAA’s scientific goals amidst a global pandemic and record-shattering 2020 hurricane season.

Organizational Gold Medal – Personal and Professional Excellence

NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson

For pioneering underway COVID19 mitigation strategies and for emergency response efforts following Hurricane Delta, including locating sunken barge.

Group Gold Medal – Scientific/Engineering Achievement

John Tsui, Bruce Plott, Thaddeus Johnson, Diane Robinson, Richard Hanson, Todd Schira, Michael Anderson, John T Custis, Robert L. Snead, Gregg Frostrom

For outstanding innovative engineering achievements in establishing weather satellite imaging capabilities over the Indian Ocean for the Defense Dept.

Group Gold Medal – Scientific/Engineering Achievement

Gabriel Brooks, Gordon Axel, Sandra Downing, Matthew Nesbit, Jesse Lamb

For developing the world’s largest radio frequency identification system to detect tagged salmon passing through the spillway of a large dam.

Group Gold Medal – Customer Service

Thomas Graziano, Edward Clark, John Murphy, Donna Page, Troy Wilds, Jocelyn Burston, Christina Heyse, Mary Mullusky, Paula Cognitore, Peggy Lee

For establishing a first-of-its-kind national water prediction operations center, transforming Impact-based Decision Support Services for the Nation.

Organizational Gold Medal – Customer Service

National Weather Service – Southern Region

For providing extraordinary life-saving services to emergency managers and the public during Hurricanes Laura in 2020 despite COVID challenges.

Group Silver Medal – Leadership

Jonathan Wolf, Linda Eldridge, Rufus Washington, Allison Elgin, Marc Tolson, Marissa Ramos, Brian Cox, Cameron Shelton, Stefan Leeb, Mathew Grow

For leading the effort to architect, design, and implement a new best-in-class technology infrastructure to support Commerce Business Systems applications.

Group Silver Medal – Leadership

Joelle Gore, Rebecca Smyth, Laura Petes, Elaine Vaudreuil

For leadership in building the National Coastal Resilience Fund, a new partnership program that enhances community and habitat resilience.

Group Silver Medal – Scientific/Engineering Achievement

Sergey Vinogradov, Liujuan Tang, Gregory Seroka, Georgios Britzolakis, Edward Myers

For developing the Global Extratropical Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System to provide storm surge and tidal water level guidance.

Organizational Silver Medal – Customer Service

Weather Forecast Office Columbia, SC

Weather Forecast Office Charleston, SC

Weather Forecast Office Greenville-Spartanburg, SC

For outstanding, life-saving customer service to the citizens of South Carolina/Eastern Georgia during the historic tornado outbreak of April, 2020.

Individual Silver Medal – Heroism

Amy Fritz

For demonstrating quick thinking and selflessness in saving the life of a child in distress.

Individual Silver Medal – Heroism

Megan Shapiro

For heroic and selfless actions to perform emergency life saving techniques during a global pandemic, successfully saving a man’s life.