Belay holds a doctoral degree in Atmospheric Physics from the University of Nevada and Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada. Prior to joining UMBC/JCET he was Professor of Physics at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Howard University, where he was Director of Graduate Studies for the Physics Department and also one of the Principal PI’s at the Beltsville Research Campus. Before joining academia, Dr. Demoz has worked for the private industry as a NASA contractor, followed by some time as a Civil Servant at NASA/GSFC in the Mesoscale Dynamics Branch. His research interests include mesoscale observation and instrumentation in atmospheric physics and climate as well as atmospheric science influence in climate policy. He has chaired the Committee for Atmospheric LIDAR Application Studies (CLAS) for the American Meteorological Society; is a member of the Atmospheric Observation Panel for Climate (AOPC) Working Group on GRUAN (WG-GRUAN); and has served as Associate Editor for the Journal of Geophysical Research, the web magazine Earthzine (http://www.earthzine.org/) and many other editorial boards. He has organized national and international conferences and workshops and serves in a number of working groups and international organization and also serves as an adjunct Professor at University of Utah. He is also active in organizing national and international research field observations (e.g. WAVES 2007, IHOP2002, PECAN 2015 for example). He is the current Director of the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET: http://jcet.umbc.edu).