Matt Burich joined NCSSM in August 2023 as an Instructor of Mathematics on the Durham campus. Matt is a native of Pensacola, FL and graduated with honors from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2002 with a Bachelor of Science degree in oceanography. After graduation, he trained as a Navy pilot and attained qualification as a plane commander in the C-2A(R) Greyhound carrier transport aircraft. In that role, he was responsible for the safe transport of high priority cargo and personnel — including distinguished visitors and foreign dignitaries — to and from the aircraft carrier at sea. Matt later served as an instructor pilot in the T-45C Goshawk jet trainer and achieved designation as both a solo check pilot and instrument check pilot. In total, he has accumulated more than 2000 flight hours and more than 300 aircraft carrier arrested landings in his flying career.  

Matt completed a Master of Science degree in meteorology at North Carolina State University in 2013 while stationed in Raleigh, NC as a Naval ROTC instructor, and was subsequently selected to join the faculty of the U.S. Naval Academy in 2016 as a junior military professor. At the Naval Academy, where he served until his Navy retirement in 2022, he taught both introductory and advanced undergraduate coursework in meteorology to students in the Department of Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, served as an academic and career advisor, and led a summer internship for students to observe and study severe convective storms on the U.S. Great Plains. Matt’s particular area of study in meteorology has been in the dynamics and thermodynamics of severe convective storms and tornadoes, and in 2023 he completed his first year of PhD work in that subspecialty at North Carolina State University. In his nine years of undergraduate teaching experience, he has instructed courses in weapon and fire control systems engineering, vector calculus, introductory meteorology, atmospheric thermodynamics, atmosphere and ocean dynamics, tropical meteorology, synoptic meteorology, and the dynamics of severe storms.