Dereka Carroll-Smith is a Project Scientist I in the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Laboratory and on the Collaborative Opportunities for Research Engagement (CORE) Office team at NSF NCAR. Dereka also holds a joint appointment as a program coordinator and adjunct professor in the Department of Chemistry, Physics, and Atmospheric Sciences at Jackson State University. She completed her postdoctoral research at the University of Maryland College Park through the National Institute of Standards and Technology Professional Research Experience Program (NIST-PREP) as a research meteorologist for the National Wind Impacts Reduction Program. While at NIST, she served as co-lead atmospheric scientist for the federal Hurricane Maria investigation, providing meteorological and climatological scientific expertise to an interdisciplinary team of physical scientists, engineers, and social scientists engaged in technical studies of Hurricane Maria’s impacts on Puerto Rico.

Dereka earned her B.S. in meteorology from Jackson State University, her M.S. in atmospheric science from Purdue University, and her Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While at Purdue she received the David M. Knox endowment fellowship and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, which allowed her to conduct interdisciplinary research focusing on tropical cyclones, climate change, and societal impacts. Dereka’s overall research interests include environmental hazards analysis, extreme weather and climate modeling, and severe weather risk and human impacts modeling. She is also committed to broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in the atmospheric sciences through experiential learning, mentoring, and engagement.