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Mackenzie Grimes

Research Associate III - Software Engineer

mackenzie.grimes@colostate.edu
Mailing Address:
325 Broadway
Boulder, CO 80303
  • Office Location:
    DSRC 3C-113
About Me:

Mackenzie is a software engineer by trade who works for CIRA in NOAA’s Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) in Boulder, CO, helping design and build software tools for the National Weather Service.

Originally from Minnesota, he earned a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota in 2017, then worked in a variety of engineering roles at Target Corporation, from Site Reliability/DevOps to backend Java services to frontend Android applications. (At time of writing, you can still see his code running in most Target stores, on small Android tablets operating as price checkers at the end of the aisles.)

From Target, he moved to the Denver area and worked as full-stack engineer at a space startup called Lunar Outpost, building cloud-native services and web apps for their AWS data platform. His work in managing and visualizing air quality data led him to CIRA and NOAA’s Global Systems Lab in June 2023.

He lives with his wife and their dog in Arvada, CO, where they love to spend time outdoors–running, hiking, camping, snowboarding–renovating their home, and pursuing the ever-elusive “perfect” cappuccino.

Projects or Work

IDSS Engine

Impact-based Decision Support Services Engine (IDSSE) is a web-based decision-making tool that helps meteorologists in the National Weather Service’s offices (WFOs, RFCs, etc.) provide clear, timely, and precise guidance to key members of the public who need decision support for their upcoming weather-dependent events.

This may be a county fire marshal scheduling a prescribed burn, or an event coordinator planning an outdoor music festival, or a transportation official allocating staff for an impending snow storm.

IDSS engine provides simple visualizations to analyze and share out expected timeframes where the weather conditions at that event’s location may approach concerning levels (e.g. heat index above a certain level, low humidity + high wind gusts, freezing rain on roadways, etc.).