Dr. Oreste Reale received his Laurea in geophysical engineering from the University of Trieste, Italy, in 1990, and his Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1996. Dr. Reale worked in Italy from 1996 to 1999 contributing to the development of a meteo-hydrological operational center in Genoa, Italy, and then moved to the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies, Maryland, in 1999.
In 2001 he joined NASA Goddard through the cooperative agreement GEST, led by UMBC. In 2011, he continued working at Goddard through USRA, in the successor cooperative agreement GESTAR. In GESTAR, he become Senior Scientist and Group Lead, Associate Director in 2015, and finally served as Director of GESTAR from February 16th, 2019 to November 30th, 2021.
Dr. Reale was appointed Chief Scientist of SSAI on December 1st, 2021. In this role, he oversees SSAI's Internal Research and Development (IRAD) and SSAI's Office of Sponsored Programs. He has continuously been member of the NASA Sounder Science Team since 2011, as PI of four grants (2011-2015; 2015-2018; 2018-2022, 2022-2025), focused on the assimilation of AIRS and CrIS cloud-cleared radiances in the GEOS system. Previously, Dr. Reale was PI of a 3-year NASA grant on Observing System Simulation Experiments (2006-2009), and co-I of NASA grants on the African Monsoon (2007-2009), on Calipso-CloudSat (2010-2014), and on long-term predictability of tropical cyclones (2011-2014). Other previous funding sources include USRA/IRAD support to investigate the feasibility and design of an Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) framework for Mars (2019-2021).