In the early 2000s Funk had been working in Ethiopia for the Famine Early Warning System Network, or FEWS NET, a project of the U.S. Agency for International Development, when researchers at the University of Reading in the U.K. devised a technique for merging satellite rainfall estimates over Africa with sparse rainfall observations from ground-based weather stations.
Dort arbeitete er für das Famine Early Warning System Network, oder FEWS NET (Hunger-Frühwarnsystem-Netzwerk), ein Projekt der U.S. Agency for International Development (Behörde der Vereinigten Staaten für internationale Entwicklung).