Farewell Pam Emch and Olivier Boucher; welcome to new board members Sue Ellen Haupt and Jean-Noel Thepaut

Our board member and chair Pam Emch resigned from the Harry Otten Foundation Board on 31 December 2023. She joined the board on 1 January 2018, and acted as chair in the last three years of her term. Pam has lead the promotion of the Harry Otten Prize call for proposals and the subsquent selections and awarding for two rounds, in 2021 and 2023. She put substantial extra effort to lead the prize selection during the covid-19 pandemic. Moreover she professionalsed our workflow and was also our connection to the AMS. Also Oliver Boucher rotated off from the Harry Otten Foundation Board on 31 December 2023, after a period of 6 years. As jury member he was always bringing in valuable arguments in the selection process. Moreover he acted as communication officer. We thank both Pam and Olivier for their efforts for the Harry Otten Foundation.

As successors of Pam and Olivier, Sue Ellen Haupt and Jean-Noel Thepaut joined the board on 1st January 2024. Sue Ellen is a Senior Scientist in the Research Applications Laboratory (RAL) of NSF NCAR, with a research focus on renewable energy prediction and modelling. She is also a Contributing and Founding Director of the World Energy and Meteorology Council (WEMC) and a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). She was recently awarded the European Academy of Wind Energy (EAWE) Scientific Award for 2022. Sue has been active with the AMS, serving as Commissioner of the AMS Commission on the Weather, Water, Climate Enterprise; AMS Council; Chaired the Committee on Artificial Intelligence Applications to Environmental Science; and performed other service for AMS and other organizations. Jean-Noël Thépaut was the Director of Copernicus Services at ECMWF until December 2023. Prior to this role he was Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the Head of Data Division and Deputy Director of the Research Department at ECMWF where his section developed data assimilation algorithms for Numerical Weather Prediction, the exploitation of satellite observations from operational and research Earth Observation platforms, and the development and production of state-of-the-art climate re-analyses. Jean-Noël is “ingénieur de la météorologie” from Météo-France. Jean-Noël is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

We wish Sue and Jean-Noel lots of success during their time on the board.

From now Gert-Jan Steeneveld will act as chair of the Board.