NSSL lead electrical and electronics engineer Allen Zahrai has been named the NOAA-wide September 2010 Employee of the month.

Zahrai is in charge of building, upgrading and maintaining NSSL’s research weather radar systems.

Over the last 18 months, Zahrai has led team efforts in the development of mobile, dual-polarized weather radars and improvements to the National Weather Radar Testbed Phased Array. Zahrai’s outstanding work has lead to the deployment of an X-Band dual-polarized mobile weather radar that has been used over the last several months for studies to improve precipitation measurements, support the 2010 Winter Olympics and the VORTEX-2 field experiment, and to study bats, micro-bursts, and the Southwest Monsoon in Arizona. Zahrai’s team not only designed, integrated and built this radar system, but it was also responsible for maintaining it while it was deployed in various field programs.

Zahrai worked on NSSL’s first research Doppler radar and helped develop the color displays that replaced black and white. He also helped convert the Cimarron research radar to dual-polarization, and received a Department of Commerce Bronze medal for his work.