Dr Jochen Schmidt
Chief Scientist - Environmental Information
Jochen has a background in hydrology, geomorphology, soil science, geo-informatics, and hazards and risk assessment. He worked for Landcare Research between 2001 and 2003 and was instrumental in developing the New Zealand Digital Soil Map (‘SMAP’). He joined NIWA in 2003 and coordinates systems for collecting, managing and delivering environmental information – ensuring they are robust and meet best-practice standards. Jochen leads NIWA’s engagement with the primary sector.
Dr Rob Davies-Colley
Principal Scientist - Water Quality
Rob is an environmental scientist specialising in water quality and aspects of stream ecology. He has an MSc in Earth Sciences (Waikato University) and PhD in Environmental Engineering (Water Resources; Oregon State University). His research interests range over general water quality, diffuse pollution from land uses (particularly pastoral agriculture), microbial contaminants and disinfection, optical water quality, natural wastewater treatment, and physical aspects of stream and riparian ecology. Applied/consulting work includes development of water quality guidelines/standards, assessment of wastewater assimilation, and impacts of livestock on streams. Rob is scientific spokesperson for the National Rivers Water Quality Network (NRWQN).
Paul Johnston
Emeritus Researcher – Atmospheric Physics
Coordinator, Atmospheric Monitoring Programme. Paul Johnston is an emeritus atmospheric research scientist at NIWA's observatory at Lauder in Central Otago, New Zealand. His research is primarily in the field of long term monitoring of atmospheric chemical composition and radiation, using spectroscopic techniques. He has developed UV/Visible spectrometer systems for the measurement of the stratosphere radicals important in ozone loss chemistry, as well as applying similar techniques to measure halogens in the boundary layer. He has been a co-chair of the global Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC), UV/Visible Work Group. He is also the GCOS Reference Upper Air Network (GRUAN) representative.
Kevin Mackay
Marine Geologist, Marine Data Manager
Programme Leader: Environmental Information Management. Head of the South and West Pacific Data Center for The Nippon Foundation-Seabed 2030 Project. Kevin Mackay (Bsc. Hons) is a geologist who has been working for NIWA for 32 years in the Fisheries and Ocean Geology groups. He has experience in relational database management and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). He has worked extensively with a variety of data sets in the marine environment including geology and geophysics, hydrography, freshwater fisheries, oceanography, fisheries, and biodiversity. Since 2010, he has been the IODE (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange) National Coordinator for Oceanographic Data Management.
Rod McKay
Group Manager - Instrument Systems
Coordinator, NIWA Instruments. Rod is an electrical and electronics engineer with a first-class honours degree from Canterbury University. He manages the NIWA Instrument Systems team, and the bulk of his time is spent scoping new projects and ensuring that those projects in the delivery and support phases occur on time and to budget. Rod has over 20 years experience in the design and delivery of hardware and software systems to local and international clients. His particular fields of interest include hardware and software system integration, data collection and management, and industrial instrumentation and control systems.
Bernard Miville
Manager Operational Forecasting
Bernard is an ex-meteorologist with a BSc (Hons Physics) and MSc (Meteorology) from McGill University (Canada). He manages the environmental forecasting operation part of EcoConnect, where several numerical models developed at NIWA are producing weather, ocean and river forecasts and satellite images are processed mainly for commercial and research users. Bernard also does a fair amout of work for the Pacific with data integration and tools for the Climate Early Warning System (CLEWS) and the development of the delivery systems like CliDEsc and CliDesc Portal.
Bernard was a meteorologist and sea ice forecaster for over 17 years for Environment Canada working in Vancouver, Ottawa and Victoria. He was also the data manager for a number of years for the CliC-SCAR WMO-WCRP program based at the Norwegian Polar Institute (Tromsø, Norway) and for the IODP program based in Hokkaido University (Sapporo, Japan).
Alan Porteous
Climate Scientist
Project Manager, Climate Database. Group Manager, Climate Data and Applications. This group manages the National Climate Database CLIDB, and the associated services that contribute to the science and applications of NIWA's National Climate Centre. Alan is also Project Manager for a range of climate early warning system developments in Pacific SIDS, including the development of the CliDEsc software platform. My background is in agriculture, having worked on a range of farms, and managed an experimental pedigree Jersey dairy farm in India for almost 10 years. I have a Diploma of Field Technology from Lincoln University, and a WMO post graduate certificate in Agricultural Meteorology gained in Israel. Gaps in my education have been plugged by extra mural papers from Massey University. Prior to the establishment of NIWA I was a research assistant at the New Zealand Meteorological Service.
Dr Kareen Schnabel
Marine Biologist
Dr. Kareen Schnabel is a taxonomist and systematist focussing her research on New Zealand decapod crustaceans. She was the Collection Manager of the NIWA Invertebrate Collection between 2006 and 2015.
Brent Wood
Principal Technician - GIS and Spatial Data Management
Coordinator, NIWA Marine Biology Databases. Brent started work for the Ministry of Fisheries in 1976, as a coastal fisheries technician. By the early 1980's he was developing computer programs to validate, manage, extract and analyse data collected by research projects. He spent some years working in the Computer Group as a data and database administrator, as well as the role of GIS expert before moving back to science when the Ministry's fisheries research team merged with NIWA in 1995. He has specialised skills in interactive data capture systems and spatial data management and analysis and has most recently been working on systems to better manage data and metadata, and improve the discoverability of, and access to, various datasets held within NIWA.
