Howard E. Motteler

Education

• Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Maryland at College Park, 1987
• M.S., Computer Science, Purdue University, 1982
• B.S., Mathematics, University of Puget Sound, 1980
• B.Mus., Pacific Lutheran University, 1974

Professional Experience

• Contract Research, March 2011--present.
• Research Associate Professor, UMBC/JCET, Aug. 1998--June 2008
• Associate Professor, UMBC/CSEE, May 1994--Aug. 1998
• NRC Research Associate, NASA/GSFC, July 1992--July 1993
• Assistant Professor, UMBC/CSEE, Aug. 1987--May 1994
• Instructor, UMBC/CSEE, Aug. 1986--May 1987
• Research Assistant, UMCP, May 1984--Aug. 1986
• Teaching Assistant, UMCP, Aug. 1983--May 1984
• Systems programmer, Purdue University, Aug. 1980--Aug. 1983

Research Interests

• Scientific computation and applications, including instrument modeling and calibration, passive infrared and microwave sounding, atmospheric radiative transfer calculations, and parallel and distributed processing.

Projects

• Calibration analysis of the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), a Fourier transform spectrometer for the NPOESS next-generation weather satellites. This involves processing low-level instrument data, modeling self-apodization and other optical and interferometric effects, analyzing gas cell and laser test data, and comparing observed and calculated data to verify spectral calibration of the instrument.

• Until June 2008 I administered and maintained a computing cluster and data system with 6 RAID servers, 90 Tbytes of RAID, a web/FTP/gateway server, 28 dual-processor cluster nodes, and assorted desktop machines, and provided user support for these systems.

• Managing large databases for atmospheric science, including scripts and tools to automate downloads from NASA and NOAA archives and tools to index and query large local data sets.

• Developing and parallelizing applications to run on our cluster, including the calculation and analysis of upwelling radiance from the data sets mentioned above, and the periodic refinement and recalculation of the tabulated compressed optical depths used for those radiative transfer calculations.

• Calibration and validation studies of AIRS, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, including detailed instrument modeling, analysis of pre-launch calibration measurements, and the comparison of calculated and observed spectra after launch.

• Statistical and physical temperature and humidity profile retrievals with simulated AIRS infrared radiances, and statistical temperature and humidity profile retrievals with microwave data from SSM-T/T2/I sounders.

Software

• A package for radiative transfer calculations from compressed tabulated optical depths (a Matlab version of "kcarta"), and tools and scripts for building a database of compressed tabulated optical depths from HITRAN data.

• Tools and sample applications for gridded analysis of profile and radiance data for very large data sets; demo applications of VIS and MODIS image manipulation and mapping, and demo applications of eigenvector compression and filtering of AIRS radiance data.

• The RTP (Radiative Transfer Profile) package, an HDF 4 data format and application interface for storage and manipulation of atmospheric profiles and associated spectra. Also assorted Matlab HDF 4 tools, including a Matlab RTP interface.

• HITRAN IR cross section tools--Matlab procedures to read and manipulate IR cross section data, including a procedure to return absorptions calculated from interpolation or extrapolation of HITRAN tabulated cross-section data. Also, tools to access and manipulate manipulate HITRAN-format data.

Journal Papers

• DeSouza-Machado, S. G., L. L. Strow, S. E. Hannon, H. E. Motteler, M. Lopez-Puertas, B. Funke, and D. P. Edwards, "Fast forward radiative transfer modeling of 4.3um nonlocal thermodynamic equilibrium effects for infrared temperature sounders," Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 34, L01802, 2007.

• L. L. Strow, S. E. Hannon, S. De-Souza Machado, H. E. Motteler, and D. C. Tobin, "Validation of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder radiative transfer algorithm," Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 111, D09S06, 2006.

• S. De Souza-Machado, L. L. Strow, S. E. Hannon and H. Motteler, "Infrared Dust Spectral Signatures from AIRS," Geophysical Review Letters, Vol. 33, L03801, 2006.

• L. Strow, S. Hannon, S. De Souza-Machado, H. Motteler, and D. Tobin, "An Overview of the AIRS Radiative Transfer Model," IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol. 41, No. 2, Pgs. 303-313, 2003.

• L. Strow, S. Hannon, M. Weiler, and H. Motteler, "Prelaunch Spectral Calibration of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS)," IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol. 41, No. 2, Pgs. 274-286, 2003.

• L. L. Strow, S. E. Hannon, S. De Souza-Machado, H. Motteler and D. Tobin, "An Overview of the AIRS Radiative Transfer Model," IEEE Transactions on GeoSciences and Remote Sensing, 41, 274, 2003.

• L. L. Strow, H. E. Motteler, R. G. Benson, S. E. Hannon, and S. De Souza-Machado. "Fast computation of monochromatic infrared atmospheric transmittances using compressed look-up tables," J. Quant. Spectrosc. Rad. Trans., Vol. 59, No 3-5, pp. 481-493, 1998.

• Motteler, H. E., Strow, L. L., McMillin., L, Gualtieri, J. A., "A Comparison of Neural Networks and Regression-Based Methods for Temperature Retrievals," Applied Optics, August, 1995.

• Motteler, H. E., Chung, A., and Sidhu, D. P., "Undetected Faults in Protocol Testing," IEEE Transactions on Communication August, 1995.

• Sidhu, D. P., Motteler, H. E., and Vallurupalli, R., "On Testing Hierarchies for Protocols," IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Oct. 1993.

• Motteler, H. E., and Sidhu, D. P., "Executable Logic Specification for Protocol Design Verification," Journal of Computer and Software Engineering, vol. 1, num. 2, pp 81-94, 1993.

• Motteler, H. E., and Smith, C. H., "A complexity measure for data flow models," International Journal of Computer and Information Sciences 14, 2, April 1985.

Conference Papers

• S. de Souza-Machado, L. L. Strow, H.E. Motteler, and S.E. Hannon, "Validation of the AIRS radiative transfer algorithm using ECMWF datafields," In Proc. SPIE Vol. 4882, p. 90-99, Remote Sensing of Clouds and the Atmosphere VII; Klaus P. Schaefer, Olga Lado-Bordowsky, Adolfo Comeron, Richard H. Picard; Eds. April 2003.

• S. de Souza-Machado, L. L. Strow, H.E. Motteler, and S.E. Hannon, "Radiative transfer observations with AIRS," In Proc. SPIE Vol. 4891, p. 84-94, Optical Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere and Clouds III; Hung-Lung Huang, Daren Lu, Yasuhiro Sasano; Eds. April 2003.

• L. Strow, S. Hannon, S. de Souza-Machado, and H. Motteler, "Validation of the AIRS radiative transfer algorithm," In Optical Remote Sensing Of The Atmosphere, Optical Society Of America, Technical Digest Series, Feb. 3- 6, 2003.

• S. de Souza-Machado, S. Hannon, L.L. Strow, H. Motteler, "Infrared Atmospheric Spectroscopy using AIRS," Eos Trans. AGU 84/(46), Fall Meet. Supple., Abstract H32B-0574, 2003.

• L. L. Strow, R. G. Benson, S. E. Hannon, H. E. Motteler., "Computation of monochromatic infrared atmospheric transmittances using compressed look-up tables," Proceedings of SPIE Conference 2830, Optical Spectroscopic Techniques and Instrumentation for Atmospheric and Space Research II, 1996.

• Motteler, H. E., Strow, L. L., Gualtieri, J. A., McMillin., L, Lo., J, "Neural Nets for Temperature Retrievals," Optical Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere, Optical Society of America, Salt Lake City, March 8-12, 1993.

• Motteler, H. E., Strow, L. L., Gualtieri, J. A., McMillin., L, "Neural Networks for Atmospheric Retrievals," Goddard Conference on Space Applications of Artificial Intelligence, May, 1993.

• Motteler, H. E., and Kanal, L. N. "The complexity of searching several classes of AND/OR graphs," IJCAI-85, Los Angeles, Aug. 18--23, 1985. An extended version is available as a University of Maryland Technical Report.

Conference Talks

• Motteler, H. E., Strow, L. L., "Pre-Flight ILS Testing of the CrIS Interferometer on NPOESS," Calcon 2007, ITAR restricted session, Utah State University, Logan Utah, Sept 10-13, 2007.

• Motteler, H. E., "Neural Nets and Related Methods for Microwave Water and Temperature Retrievals," SIAM Conference on Geosciences, special session on applications of neural networks to problems in meteorology and oceanography, San Antonio, Texas, Feb. 8, 1995.

• Motteler, H. E., "The consistency of a graph computation schema," Logic and Computer Science Workshop, Lexington, Kentucky, June 9--14, 1985.

Technical Reports

• Motteler, H. E., Strow, L. L., Hannon, S., "Retrieving CO2 Column Variations: Feasibility and Initial Results," Aug, 1998.

• Motteler, H. E., "An Evaluation of Neural Networks for Retrieval of Water and Temperature Profiles from SSM-T/T2/I Soundings," May, 1995.

• Motteler, H. E., and Sidhu, D. P., "Self-Stabilization in Iteration Systems," Jan., 1993; revised Jan., 2000.

Invited Articles

• Motteler, H. E., and Sidhu, D. P., "Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1)," ConneXions, Jan. 1992.

• Motteler, H. E., and Sidhu, D. P., "OSI Conformance Testing," ConneXions, Dec. 1992.

Grants and Awards

• "Creation of a GigaPOP Serving the Baltimore-Washington Corridor," with Jack Suess, NSF, $350,000, 1997

• "Information Content in Atmospheric Retrievals and Radiative Transfer Calculations," NASA, $20,000, 1995

• "Algorithm Development for SSM/T2," NOAA, $20,000, 1993

• "Neural Networks and Related Methods for Atmospheric Retrievals," NASA, $21,000, 1993

• National Research Council Research Associate Award, a one-year fellowship at NASA/GSFC, 1992. My research advisor at GSFC was Dr. Milton Halem

Teaching

• Parallel and Distributed Processing, CMSC 483/691P
• Numerical Computation, CMSC 655
• Operating Systems, CMSC 421
• Logic for Computer Science, CMSC 691
• Principles of Programming Languages, CMSC 331
• Symbolic and Algebraic Processing, CMSC 656
• Analysis of Algorithms, CMSC 641
• Theory of Processes, CMSC 721
• Semantics and Program Verification, CMSC 654*
• Automata Theory and Formal Languages, CMSC 379*
• Theory of Computation, CMSC 679*
  (* old course numbering scheme)

Notes

• This condensed CV lists professional experience and publications from 1980 on. Some minor publications and talks or poster sessions where I was a co-author but not the presenter are omitted.