Staff
Dr. Eric Wilcox is Research Professor in the Division of Atmospheric Sciences at the Desert Research Institute in Reno NV. He earned a bachelor of science degree in Physics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and a Ph.D. in Oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD. Prior to joining DRI in 2010, Dr. Wilcox was a physical scientist in the Climate and Radiation Laboratory at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and a postdoctoral fellow at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University. His research addresses the interactions among aerosols, clouds, and precipitation towards a goal of improved understanding of precipitation, cloud variability and radiative forcing of climate at regional scales. This work relies on satellite and in-situ observations, as well as simulations with numerical models of the atmosphere and climate. Dr. Wilcox manages DRI’s atmospheric modeling group, which implements a wide range of numerical models, including fine-resolution atmospheric models for regional climate studies and applied research in water resources and renewable energy projects, air quality and chemistry models, and global coupled ocean/atmosphere climate models. He is also a member of the graduate faculty in the Interdisciplinary Atmospheric Sciences Program at UNR and teaches courses in Atmospheric Modeling and Atmospheric Physics. In December 2022 he became the NVSGC and NV NASA EPSCoR Director.
Darlene Aranda joined the Nevada System of Higher Education System Sponsored Programs Office & EPSCoR in September 2023 as the NASA Program Coordinator for the Nevada NASA Space Grant Consortium (NVSG) and NASA EPSCoR programs. In this role, she assists the Research Administrator and Project Director in implementing NASA EPSCoR and Space Grant program goals. She holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MPA from Cal State Long Beach. She has served in a number of roles in higher education across the U.S. Prior to joining the EPSCoR office, she worked at UNLV’s Academic Success Center as interim Budget Manager.