Kevin Leavor joined the SAGE III ISS team in August 2013 as an instrument scientist for the instrument assembly. As a member of the team, he has assisted in the characterization and testing of the scientific capabilities and performance of the SAGE III hardware through integration and testing prior to launch. Kevin acts as the main developer and maintainer of the Charge Coupled Device (CCD) Controller Software that determines how SAGE captures spectral images during events. Since launch, Kevin has aided efforts to commission the payload and perform inter-comparisons of SAGE III/ISS data with other in-flight satellite missions. His post-launch scientific efforts have included analyses of the progression of the 2017 stratospheric injection and evolution of pyrocumulus events from the 2017 Pacific Northwest wildfires, global distributions of aerosol and aerosol properties, and observations of localized phenomena related to the Antarctic polar vortex. Kevin is additionally part of teams for both the Disturbance Monitoring Package and Contamination Monitoring Packages, and aids in the development and analysis of data generated by both subsystems.
Kevin is a 2007 graduate of Washington and Jefferson College with a B.A. in Mathematics, Physics, and Music. He attained his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from Hampton University in 2013 as a student under Pat McCormick with a dissertation titled “Noise Reduction in Lidar Signals Using Thresholded Empirical Mode Decomposition: Analysis and Applications.” His academic interests include statistics, data analysis, data visualization, software development, and machine learning. Outside of work, Kevin enjoys board and video gaming, 19th century film and experimental music, running and cycling, and taking care of a menagerie of pets including his dog, George, his cats, Callie and Tiger, and his Jenday Conure and Quaker Parrot, Poppy and Chubbs.
