Dr. Posselt is a research scientist in the Atmospheric Physics and Weather group at JPL. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Atmospheric Science from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1997 and 2001, respectively, and his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University in 2006. Derek came to JPL in 2016 after serving for 9 years as a faculty member in the Climate and Space Science department at the University of Michigan. He currently serves as the Deputy Project Scientist for the NASA Investigation of Convective Updrafts (INCUS) mission. He is leading several teams that are tasked with using data assimilation and inverse problem theory to aid in new mission design, including two NOAA projects and multiple NASA mission concepts. Derek has published over 100 peer reviewed journal articles on topics that range from inverse problem theory to the dynamics and thermodynamics of diverse precipitating cloud systems. His current research interests include: exploring the interaction between clouds, precipitation, and climate, development of new methods for quantitatively evaluating new observing systems, remote sensing of cloud and precipitation properties, numerical modeling of cloud systems, and the use of Bayesian methodologies in the development of new data assimilation and remote sensing techniques