The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility has conducted the Coast-Urban-Rural Atmospheric Gradient Experiment (CoURAGE) in the Baltimore, Maryland, area since December 2024. The CoURAGE field campaign’s continuous operation would not be possible without the help of five technicians working onsite to monitor and maintain ARM’s instruments.

The technicians are lead David Oaks, Ana Gabriela “Gabi” Bloom (previously Pessoa), Samuel Gonzalez, Mark Manriquez, and Chaz Padilla. Oaks, Bloom, Gonzalez, and Manriquez are all from Hamelmann Communications. Padilla was hired through GEM Technologies Inc.

Oaks began working with ARM almost 11 years ago. For the first five-plus years of his ARM career, he was with Fairweather LLC supporting ARM Mobile Facility operations at Oliktok Point, Alaska. Since then, he has moved to Hamelmann and been the lead site technician for four other ARM Mobile Facility deployments:

• the 2019–2020 Cold-Air Outbreaks in the Marine Boundary Layer Experiment (COMBLE) in Norway
• the 2021–2022 TRacking Aerosol Convection interactions ExpeRiment (TRACER) in the Houston, Texas, area
• the 2023–2024 Eastern Pacific Cloud Aerosol Precipitation Experiment (EPCAPE) in La Jolla, California
• CoURAGE, which will run through November 2025.

Bloom is also an ARM veteran, having come onboard in 2022 to support TRACER after graduating from the University of Houston with a bachelor’s degree in electrical power engineering technology. In 2021, Bloom had helped with ozonesonde/weather balloon launches from the University of Houston campus for the TRACER-Air Quality (AQ) campaign, led by research associate professor James Flynn.

After TRACER, Bloom worked as a site technician for EPCAPE. She then supported beta testing of CoURAGE instruments at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico before heading to Maryland for the CoURAGE campaign.

Gonzalez is the newest member of the team, having joined Hamelmann in March 2025. He graduated from the University of California, Davis, in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace science and engineering.

While working toward his degree, Gonzalez was an undergraduate researcher in the university’s Human/Robotics/Vehicle Integration and Performance Laboratory, where he designed and built a mockup of a space habitat with more than 700 parts.

Manriquez has been with Hamelmann since May 2024. Before joining Hamelmann, he was a research technician under Flynn for two years at the University of Houston. Manriquez’s duties included calibrating instruments, maintaining and repairing equipment, preparing samples for testing and recording results, and analyzing data.

Manriquez received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Houston in 2021. While working toward his bachelor’s, he participated in a project in which undergraduates built and deployed instruments to study atmospheric and auroral phenomena. From 2021 to 2023, he took master’s degree courses in aerospace engineering at the University of Houston.

Padilla graduated from Baltimore’s Morgan State University in 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. Morgan State is hosting the main instrument site for CoURAGE at its Clifton Park location in northeast Baltimore.

As an undergraduate, Padilla helped Morgan State associate professor Xiaowen Li, a current CoURAGE co-investigator, with research on 3D segmentation of clouds, atmospheric processes, machine learning, and neural networks. As part of this work, Padilla assembled 12 weather stations using sensors to collect data on wind, temperature, humidity, rain, and solar energy in Baltimore.

While working, the technicians take pictures to document campaign sites, instruments, and the science conditions they are observing. Several of their photos are available in the CoURAGE campaign’s ARM Flickr album. Oaks and Bloom also took photos at their previous deployments, which are available on Flickr.