This feature showcases one video each Friday that captures the essence of innovation, technology and new ideas happening in government today.

This week’s video and text courtesy of the National Science Foundation’s YouTube channel.

Description: Tornadoes claim hundreds of lives and cause billions of dollars in damages in the United States. With support from the National Science Foundation, computer scientist Amy McGovern at the University of Oklahoma is working to find answers to key questions about tornado formation. Why do they occur in some storms, but not in others? While video from storm chasers and data from Doppler radar can help meteorologists understand some aspects of tornadoes, McGovern uses different, powerful tools, such as supercomputers and known data mining, which finds patterns in very large datasets. In addition to studying real storms, McGovern and her team also create supercomputer simulations to analyze how constantly changing storm components interact. Then, she works with weather experts to help her sort out the information in the simulations. McGovern’s ultimate goal is to come up with reliable tornado forecasting system.