Staff Members
Charles E. Konrad II
Director & Professor
Carolina Hall 305
919-962-3873
konrad@unc.edu
Website
Charles, "Chip," Konrad, II, grew up in Roanoke, VA, where he spent lots of time following the weather, poring over maps, collecting rocks, and hiking the mountains. He earned a B.S. in Geophysics from Virginia Tech, an M.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Georgia.
Chip became a professor at the University of North Carolina in 1993. His research focuses on the synoptic climatological characteristics of extreme weather and their impacts across the southeastern United States. He has much expertise across a wide range of areas in climatology and meteorology, including heavy precipitation, tornadoes, hurricanes, cold air outbreaks, heat waves, and winter weather.
Chip has published numerous research articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Monthly Weather Review, Weather and Forecasting, the International Journal of Climatology, Climate Research, and Applied Geography. He also co-authored on the Southeast Technical Report for the National Climate Assessment, and has served as the Director of the Southeast Regional Climate Center since 2010.
Christopher Fuhrmann
Deputy Director & Regional Climatologist
Albert & Gladys Coats Bldg 202
919-843-2704
fuhrman1@email.unc.edu
Originally from Connecticut, Chris moved to North Carolina in the mid-90s and has lived in the South ever since. He earned a B.A. and Ph.D. in Geography from UNC-Chapel Hill and an M.S. in Geography from the University of Georgia. Chris began his career at the SERCC before joining the faculty in the Geosciences Department at Mississippi State University. He also served as the Mississippi Assistant State Climatologist. Chris returned to the SERCC in the Fall of 2022 to direct the Center’s applied research program and lead various climate monitoring and outreach efforts in the region.
Chris’s research interests are in the fields of applied and synoptic climatology, where he studies the effects of weather and climate on society and the role of large-scale circulation features on the distribution and intensity of surface weather events. He is also interested in these relationships in the context of climate variability and change. Chris has published articles on tornado outbreaks, heat waves, winter weather, and the linkages between climate and various aspects of society, such as agriculture and public health. He was also a co-author on the Southeast region technical report used for the 2014 U.S. National Climate Assessment. When he’s not working, Chris enjoys playing chess with his son, Jackson, and singing country music songs with his daughter, Caroline.
William G. Schmitz
Service Climatologist-Meteorologist
Albert & Gladys Coats Bldg 203
919-843-9721
wschmitz@email.unc.edu
William spent most of his youth in California near San Francisco. He moved to Vermont in the early 1990’s so that he could experience some real weather. When the March Super Storm of 1993, came plowing up the East Coast, it planted the passion and ambition for Weather/Climate that would drive William along his career path. In 1998 he obtained his Associates Degree in Physics, and subsequently transferred to Plymouth, NH where in 2001 he graduated with a Bachelors in Meteorology.
William's first job was with Aquila Inc., a Kansas City, MO, based energy company that was spinning up a Weather Derivative Desk. While in Kansas City, William was a Climate Data Analyst and managed a global database of weather data.
William then went on to Work with a small group called GuaranteedWeather and finally with the Southeast Regional Climate Center in 2005. Within the SERCC, William is the Service Climatologist and is responsible for climate research associated with the Southeastern U.S., and educating current and new users on how the SERCC can be of assistance to them.
Lauren Babinetz
Graduate Research Associate
Albert & Gladys Coates Bldg 201-A
babinetz@unc.edu
Lauren Babinetz is a health geographer pursuing a PhD at UNC Chapel Hill in the department of Geography and Environment. A graduate of the George Washington University (Geography BA ‘22), Babinetz’s experience in GIS technology fuels her work at the Southeast Regional Climate Center studying human behavior during extreme weather events. Her thesis project investigates hurricane exposure’s impact on violence against women and girls across North Carolina.
Liv Davis
Graduate Research Associate
Albert & Gladys Coates Bldg 104
livdavis@unc.edu
Liv is originally from Capitola, CA and graduated from Indiana University, Bloomington in 2023 with a B.A in Geography and a B.A. International Studies with a minor in Atmospheric Science. Her research interests are primarily developing extreme weather resilience decision support tools for targeted interventions for vulnerable populations. In 2024, she joined the department of Geography and SERCC as a PhD student advised by Dr. Chip Konrad and Dr. Paul Delamater.
Alex Henson
Graduate Research Associate
Albert & Gladys Coates Bldg 201-B
cliffah@ad.unc.edu
Although originally from Champaign, Illinois, Alex has called North Carolina his home for most of his life. Alex Henson is a PhD student at UNC Chapel Hill in the department of Geography and Environment. He began working with the Southeast Regional Climate Center (SERCC) in the fall of 2022 during his undergraduate studies at UNC, where he earned a B.S. in Environmental Sciences. Currently, Alex is advised by Dr. Charles Konrad, with his primary research interests centered around the mapping and understanding of fungal diseases as they relate to climate.
Jacob Tafrate
Graduate Research Associate
Albert & Gladys Coates Bldg 201-B
jdtaf@unc.edu
Jacob Tafrate joined the SERCC in 2026 as a PhD student in the department of Geography and Environment at UNC Chapel Hill. Jacob holds B.A. (22’) and M.S. (24’) degrees from the George Washington University, where he conducted fieldwork across the Arctic studying the interactions between urbanization and extreme climatic conditions. Following graduation, Jacob worked with the EPA’s Office of Research and Development building national-scale landscape and climate change datasets for community users. Advised by Dr. Chip Konrad, Jacob will be working on the SERCC’s urban heat mapping research. His work will specifically analyze how landscape change patterns across the Southeast have altered local microclimates, potentially increasing extreme heat exposure across the region.
Yi Peng(July) Yang
Applications Programmer
julyyang@email.unc.edu
July grew up in Taiwan, an island country located in East Asia. She originally pursued her M.S. in Natural Resource Management from National Taiwan University in 2015. Along the way, she participated in many natural resource monitoring and data collecting, which inspired her with a passion for GIS and web map development. She then joined a coding boot camp to learn Swift and self-taught JavaScript. In 2016, she decided to come to the United States to pursue her second M.S. in Geospatial Information Science and Technology from North Carolina State University. She joined SERCC in August 2020 as a developer, mainly in charge of SERCC/Convergence tools maintenance and development, and also provided troubleshooting to anything related to code. Her passion for coding and geospatial information technology is still growing. Learning how others solve technical issues and reading the source codes behind beautiful web maps are great habits of hers.