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Jim Silva

PMED Division Chief
Office of Space Weather Observations
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Jim Silva is the Chief of the Project Management and Execution Division (PMED). The Division is responsible for oversight of the implementation phase of several important satellite and ground systems programs. For the satellite programs, this phase includes design, fabrication, integration, test, launch and on-orbit evaluation of our space assets.

As Chief, Jim has overall lead for executing the following projects: COSMIC-2, INDEC (including ScatSat), Metop C, NOAA's Metop Second Generation Product Processing and Archive, Geo Hosting, CDARS, Radio Occultation Missions of Opportunity, and POES Legacy. He has been with NOAA for over 36 years, mostly leading projects within the Office of Projects, Planning and Analysis. Jim was the NOAA instrument manager for the POES sensors on the NOAA KLM satellites in the 1980's. Later, he went on to manage two ground systems; one to assess NOAA's requirements for processing and distributing Jason 1 altimetry data, the other to exploit the Suomi NPP data for NOAA and other civilian and military users.

Jim has a Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology from Penn State and a Master of Science degree in Engineering Management from the University of Maryland. He received three medals while working for NOAA, and is a graduate of OPM's Executive Leadership training: Leadership for a Democratic Society. He and his wife have a teenage son.