Congratulation to 2025 CIRA Research and Service Initiative award winners

By Theresa Barosh | June 2025

The annual CIRA Research and Service Initiative nominated awards are reviewed by a standing committee. After some difficult deliberations among numerous entries, they settled on one award in each category.

“It is quite the honor, given the company we keep,” said CIRA Director Steven Miller, “Please join me in congratulating this year’s recipients, Naufal and Barbra.”

Naufal Razin outside in the mountains

Research Initiative Award

Naufal Razin was nominated for development of the AI-ready TC-PRIMED data microwave dataset for tropical cyclones and making that publicly available at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. He worked with a group of federal and university employees on the project. The committee felt this was an award-worthy accomplishment, met the award criteria and represents a truly significant accomplishment for an early career scientist.

Razin’s research centers around improving understanding of hurricanes and developing forecast products by compiling and utilizing a large dataset of tropical cyclone information, satellite observation, and environmental data called the Tropical Cyclone Precipitation, Infrared, Microwave, and Environmental Dataset (TC PRIMED).

In his Colorado State University doctoral work, Razin used machine learning and an earlier version of TC PRIMED to analyze the role of convective and stratiform precipitation in tropical cyclone intensity change. He collaborated with scientists from the CSU Department of Atmospheric Science and CIRA to initially develop TC PRIMED and continues to work with the team to improve TC PRIMED now as a CIRA researcher.

Naufal said TC PRIMED provides a huge potential to better understand tropical cyclones, especially through the use of AI.

Barbra Lashbrook profile photo

Service Initiative Award

Barbra Lashbrook was nominated for long-term excellence in supporting the CIRA website. This work benefits all of CIRA, and the nomination included longer term contributions, in addition to specific recent accomplishments like removing copyright material from the many pages of the CIRA website.

Lashbrook has particularly done extensive work recently to update all CIRA web content to meet CSU accessibility requirements and recent federal regulations. This work brings CIRA’s main website accessibility scores to the top of the list among CSU websites; Lashbrook’s work goes above and beyond expectations.

“CIRA creates an incredible amount of valuable and compelling research, and doing the extra work to make that research truly accessible to all is something we can be proud of,” said Matt Rogers, CIRA Assistant Director for Outreach and Communications.

Recognition

The recipients will each receive a cash prize in addition to having their names added to the CIRA plaque commemorating each year’s Research and Service Initiative award winners.