About Me
My name is Matt Richardson and I am currently a student in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University (hence the address). At present, I am working on my PhD. I am studing under Sonia Kreidenweis here in the Atmospheric Chemistry group. My current research interests are in aerosols and their effects on cold and mixed-phase clouds.
I have been married to a beautiful and understanding woman, Sasha, since 2000. She is a veterinarian currently working at Blue Sky Animal Clinic just down the road in Loveland, CO. In September of 2006, she gave birth to our first child, Noah. Sasha and I enjoy traveling, climbing, biking and anything outdoors. We have spent time in several countries as well as traveled extensively around the US.
How did I get here?
I graduated from the University of Texas in 1999 with a BS in Mechanical Engineering. After graduation, I began work as a software engineer with Booz, Allen and Hamilton (a natural fit given that I had no prior experience programming). There, I developed training models for the International Space Station in the Structural and Mechanical group (or S&M as it was affectionately known).
In 2001, I “retired” from Booz and headed to SE Asia for a short walkabout with Sasha, my wife. Upon return, Sasha (then a veterinary medicine student at Texas A&M) and I, settled down in lovely College Station, TX so that I could be in the same town as her. In College Station, I studied mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University and was a research assistant for Dr. Andrew McFarland. I participated in a study to develop a system to detect hazardous bioaerosols in the mail prior to distribution.
After completing my MS at TAMU, I forced my wife to move out here to Fort Collins in northern Colorado where we are buffeted by the Rockies and plains. Here, I am focusing on studies of ice nucleation using CSU's Continuous Flow Diffusion Chamber (CFDC). By the end of my first year, I had participated in a field campaign at Steamboat Spring's Storm Peak Laboratory (SPL), the second Ice Nuclei and SPECTroscopy project (INSPECT-II).
More recently, I participated in the tenth Cloud Layer EXperiment (CLEX-10) and have been working on a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the CFDC. In conjunction with the latter, I have developed a Java based microphysical model which simulates aerosol growth in the chamber using particle trajectories generated by the CFD simulation. The goal is identify (with the models) limitations of the CFDC's measurement capabilities and validate these limitations in laboratory experiments.
Contact Info
If you would like to get in touch with me, you can reach me by phone, email or regular post at :
Matt Richardson
Colorado State University
Department of Atmospheric Science
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1371
(970) 491-3392
