DUSAN S. ZRNIC (born June 3, 1942 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia) is Leader of the Doppler Radar and Remote Sensing Research group at the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), and Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering and Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, Norman OK. He graduated from the University of Belgrade, with a Dipl. Ing. degree in electrical engineering in 1965, and obtained the M.Sc. (1966) and the Ph.D. (1969) degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL. Following employment as a research and teaching assistant with the Charged Particle Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois, he joined the Electrical Engineering Department of the California State University, Northridge, CA. He became Associate Professor in 1974 and Professor in 1978. During the 1973-1974 academic year, Dr. Zrnic was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the NSSL, and in 1975-1976 he was on sabbatical research leave from California State University at the same laboratory. His research experience includes circuit design, applied mathematics, magnetohydrodynamics, radar signal processing and systems design.
Recently he has spent considerable effort towards improvements of weather radar signal processing, advancements of polarimetric measurements and their interpretation, and development of algorithms for NEXRAD. In 2001 he initiated polarimetric weather radar research in NOAA and made significant advances towards its operational applications planned for 2009. Since 1976 he has been a member of URSI Commissions C and F; he is a fellow of the AMS, and a fellow of the IEEE. Four times he received the Best Research Paper Award from NOAA’s office of Ocean and Atmospheric Research. He has published extensively (over 150 referred papers) on weather radar signal processing, radar meteorology, and remote sensing.
His most important and representative publication is the book Doppler Radar and Weather Observations, New York, Academic Press, 1984, second edition 1993 (reprinted by Dover in 2006) co-authored with Dr. Richard Doviak. Dusan is a co-recipient of the IEEE 1988 Harry Diamond Memorial Award for contributions to and applications of weather radar science and is sharing the 1993 IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Award with Dr. P. Mahapatra. He is recipient with R.V Ryzhkov of the WMO 1996 Vaisala award. He holds three US patents in the area of weather radar technology. In 2004 he became a recipient of the Presidential Rank Award for exceptional long term accomplishments. In 2006 he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering with citation: “For development of potent radar methods that have greatly enhanced operational weather detection and warning and advanced meteorological research.” He was recognized by the AMS Remote Sensing Prize in 2008: “For pioneering and substantial contributions to improvements of meteorological radars for both research and operational applications.” NOAA 2010 Technology Transfer Award was given to him for “developing a method that allows faster updates of dual-polarized radar data without losing function and provides significant cost savings”.
He has developed scientific and engineering aspects (e.g., a patent) of polarimetric weather radar technology and brought these to successful operational implementation on the National Network of weather radars.