John Cortinas, an inactive AMS Member, is Director of the Office of Weather and Air Quality in Silver Spring, Maryland. OWAQ is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. Dr. Cortinas leads strategic planning activities for NOAA's environmental modeling enterprise. As the director of OWAQ, he also oversees NOAA's US Weather Research Program and co-chairs the NOAA Weather Ready Nation steering committee. Prior to leading OWAQ, he was director of OAR's Cooperative Institute program where he oversaw grant management activities and policy development for NOAA's 15 cooperative institutes across the United States, which conduct research at academic institutions in all areas relevant to NOAA's mission. Dr. Cortinas has a bachelor's degree in meteorology (1987) from Metropolitan State College in Denver and a PhD degree in geophysical sciences (1992) from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow, a research scientist, and ultimately the assistant director of the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies at the University of Oklahoma from 1992 to 2003. Dr. Cortinas' research specialties include hazardous winter weather, severe storms, mesoscale atmospheric phenonema, numerical modeling, and operational weather forecasting. He has published numerous articles on these topics in refereed journals and has served on national scientific committees.