Craig W. Tillman

President

WeatherPredict Consulting Inc. (An Affiliate of RenaissanceRe Holdings)

Mr. Tillman serves as President of WeatherPredict Consulting Inc., a RenaissanceRe affiliate that provides intelligence on atmospheric perils to a range of entities. Craig Tillman has been associated with the RenaissanceRe organization since 1996. As part of the team that formed Glencoe Insurance Ltd., Mr. Tillman served as that company’s Chief Underwriting Officer. He has also led RenaissanceRe’s modeling group, focusing on catastrophe models and developing analytical staff to support underwriting operations.

Prior to joining RenaissanceRe, Mr. Tillman’s experience spanned 13 years as a consultant in catastrophe risk for clients in the insurance, government, equity management, and municipal bond insurance industries. Mr. Tillman has also played a key role in developing software tools and risk analysis methods for use in analyzing a wide range of commercial and residential exposures. Mr. Tillman is a member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and also serves as an Executive Director for the Institute for Business and Home Safety.

Dr. David Bachiochi Ph.D.

Regional Manager, Raleigh Office

Dr. Bachiochi is responsible for helping lead a team of WPC scientists in various operational forecast/product development and risk assessment projects driven by client needs. Dr Bachiochi has been part of WeatherPredict since its inception in 2000 and has played a pivotal role in overall R&D efforts during that time and has recently helped manage company operations in the Raleigh office. Dr Bachiochi contributes with his expertise in prediction and risk assessment for seasonal climate and ENSO, agricultural and energy interests, extra-tropical storms, tropical storms and to a lesser extent climate change.

Dr. Bachiochi has over 15 years of experience as an atmospheric scientist both academically and with WeatherPredict. His focused research academically revolved around non-linear dynamics of the atmosphere, ENSO dynamics, coupled ocean-atmosphere modeling, and forecast ensemble techniques with some minor emphasis on climate data assimilation and global climate model cloud modeling. His work prior to joining WeatherPredict included pioneering work in coupled model initialization and seasonal climate SuperEnsemble forecasting. More recently, he has been involved in ensemble precipitation products, European wind storm risk products, and global weather risk evaluation for various other perils. Dr Bachiochi holds his B.S., M.S., and PhD. In Atmospheric Science from Florida State University.

Dr. Sergei Frolov Ph.D.

Senior Scientist

Dr. Frolov is a senior research scientist responsible for leading research, development, and operational support of products and services informing clients about ocean-related environmental hazards. Dr. Frolov started working for WeatherPredict’s predecessor organization as a consultant in 1998 and has assumed a permanent research scientist position in 2001. Dr. Frolov has initiated and led to successful completion multiple research and consulting projects for the offshore oil and gas industry. He is a principal contributor to the Eddy Forecast System – the essential tool used by WeatherPredict to forecast ocean currents in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dr. Frolov has over 10 years experience as an oceanographer and computer modeler including designing computer ocean simulation and prediction systems. Dr. Frolov holds a B.S. in Theoretical Physics from St. Petersburg State University (Russia) and a M.S. in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Rhode Island.

Vicki Pickering

Account Executive

Vicki Pickering is responsible for much of WeatherPredict's external and internal client service communications. She also provides both operational forecast support and performs in-house research and data analysis. Vicki joined WeatherPredict in 2005 as a Research Analyst and has been involved in the development and provision of many forecast products and services.

Vicki Pickering joined WeatherPredict on completion of her MS in Meteorology from Penn State University. She specialized in decision making from forecast information and the use of meteorological information in business. Vicki also holds an MPhys in Physics from The University of Warwick in the UK.

Dail Rowe, Ph.D.

Regional Manager, Narragansett Office

Dr. Rowe is responsible for leading a team of WeatherPredict scientists focused on hurricane risk assessment and forecasting, and works closely with clients managing their exposure to hurricane risk. Dr. Rowe joined WeatherPredict’s predecessor organization as a senior research scientist in 1999 and has assumed positions of increasing responsibility since that time, including serving as an integral part of WeatherPredict’s atmospheric and oceanic research and development efforts. Dr. Rowe is a principal contributor to many WeatherPredict initiatives including real-time tropical cyclone prediction, simulation of historical tropical cyclone events, assessment of risk from tropical cyclones and extratropical storms, and research into climatological control of tropical cyclone path and intensity.

Dr. Rowe has over 15 years experience as an oceanographer and meteorologist including several years on the research faculty at the University of Hawaii, where his research focused on the air-sea interactions in the western Pacific warm-pool that are essential for understanding the ENSO phenomenon. Dr. Rowe holds a B.S. in Physics from Guilford College and a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Rhode Island.

Eric Williford, Ph.D.

Manager, Operational Weather Forecasting Team

Dr. Williford is presently manager of WeatherPredict's operational weather forecasting team, which includes worldwide tropical cyclone prediction. This group is responsible for daily operational weather forecast products, including expert analysis and informational data sets, for both internal and external clientele. He co-founded WeatherPredict's predecessor, Weather Predict Inc., in Tallahassee Florida and has had a key role in the establishment of its operational weather forecasting program. Dr. Williford is a contributor to many WeatherPredict initiatives including real-time tropical cyclone prediction, prediction and assessment of risk from tropical cyclones and extratropical storms, and research into operational weather forecast improvements, including ongoing enhancements to the worldwide precipitation and temperature forecasting and tropical cyclone prediction efforts.

Dr. Williford has 12 years of numerical weather and operational tropical prediction and analysis including the establishment of the Realtime Hurricane Forecast Center in the Meteorology department at Florida State University, under Dr. T. N. Krishnamurti's guidance. From this effort came the Superensemble™ forecasting technology, created and patented through Florida State by Dr. Krishnamurti, and this technology was key to Dr. Williford's research, including his dissertation topic. Dr. Williford holds a B.S. in Engineering (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering majors) and a Masters and Ph. D. in Meteorology from Florida State University. While attending Florida State, he was a U.S. Department of Energy Computational Science Fellow and is presently a member of the American Meteorological Society.

Alan Basist

Senior Scientist

Alan Basist joined WeatherPredict Consulting in 2008. Alan's primary responsibilities are to use data obtained from satellite observations to monitor worldwide temperatures, wetness, and snow cover. He also develops and analyzes yield models for all the major crops under production around the world, and determines the return period of crop failure in specific critical regions.

Prior to joining WeatherPredict, Alan Basist was founder and CEO of Commodity Hedgers, Inc., which initially developed the technique to use the Special Sensor Microwave Imager to derive global products for land surface temperature and wetness. These products have been used by United States Department of Agriculture, World Bank, North American Drought Monitor, Yale University, Cargill, Canadian Government, and many others. He served as a research Meteorologist at the Climatic Prediction Center and the National Climatic Data Center, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He was a founding member of the rapid response team that prepared reports on the state of the climate for White House, NOAA headquarters, and press releases. Alan Basist also served as a remote sensing specialist in the Diagnostic Branch of the NOAA Climate Analysis Center. He was awarded a 'certificate of recognition' for sustained superior performance as a meteorologist in the Diagnostics Branch of the Climate Analysis Center, US Climate Prediction Center and bronze award for superior federal service for the US Department of Commerce.