David Melecio-Vazquez, Ph.D.

David Melecio-Vazquez, Ph.D. has a diverse range of work experience in various scientific and research roles. David is currently working as a Geospatial Data Scientist at First Street Foundation since January 2022. Prior to this, they were a NOAA EPP Doctoral Fellow at City College of New York from August 2013 to September 2021. In this role, they conducted research on high-resolution numerical weather prediction for dense cities and focused on evaluating and improving boundary-layer parameterizations. David also performed data analysis on various observation platforms to evaluate the performance of the weather model.

In 2020, David worked as an Insight Data Science Fellow at Insight Data Science, where they undertook a consulting project for the COVID Alliance. David built a tool that assigned point-of-interest information to clusters of cell-phone ping data using OpenStreetMap and Yelp. David contextualized the ping data with business information from Yelp API and building footprints from OpenStreetMap.

Additionally, David served as a NOAA Experiential Research and Training Opportunity Doctoral Fellow at NOAA from March 2019 to July 2019. Here, they led a cross-functional collaboration to integrate software within the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model for operational weather forecasting. David also conducted exploratory data analysis for model vs observation evaluation and gained experience in full-stack web development.

Other experiences include serving as a mentor for the High School Initiative in Remote Sensing (HIRES) program at The City College New York in 2017, a Graduate Research Internship Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2016, a Students Professional and Academic Readiness with Knowledge in Satellites (SPARKS) intern at I.M. Systems Group Inc. (IMSG) in 2016, and participating in Undergraduate Research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2011.

David's work experience showcases their expertise in geospatial data analysis, numerical weather prediction, data science, software integration, web development, and mentoring.

David Melecio-Vazquez, Ph.D., received their Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, culminating their studies in 2011. Subsequently, they pursued their Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) at The City College of New York in the field of Mechanical Engineering, successfully completing their doctoral studies in 2020.