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His advocacy on behalf of Unidata tools and data and his entrainment of dozens of students through that advocacy have provided a robust cadre of new Unidata community members. |
The Russell DeSouza award honors "individuals whose energy, expertise, and active involvement enable the Unidata Program to better serve the geosciences."
Dr. Mark J. Laufersweiler has worked tirelessly to promote the use of computing technology both in and out of the classroom. Mark served on the Unidata Users Committee for three years (2001-2004) and has encouraged students to attend Unidata users and training workshops. Mark co-chaired the 2003 Unidata Users workshop, Expanding Horizons: Using Environmental Data for Education, Research, and Decision Making. He helped organize a regional workshop on the Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) at the University of Oklahoma in September 2007.
Mark taught Introduction to Synoptic Meteorology, during which sophomore meteorology majors learned to use command line GEMPAK and scripting to create weather maps. Since then he has helped to reorganize the sophomore level courses to formally include a thorough computing section for the sophomore course sequence.
Outside of the classroom Mark has continually encouraged students to go beyond the course material and use the computing resources available through the School of Meteorology for making their own maps. Specifically, Mark has encouraged a group of undergraduate and graduate students to create an operational forecasting page using GEMPAK. This group is colloquially known as the "Hoot Team," named after the OU computer. He has and continues to give the group guidance, answering the endless number of questions and encouraging group members to make use of all the data and resources available to us through Unidata and other data feeds. He has also helped the project to secure the computer resources necessary to accomplish this ambitious goal. The Hoot Team continues to have a special two-day seminar course to teach new members about GEMPAK; typically over half of the attendees are freshmen.
In April 2006, the Hoot site was highlighted by Unidata as the community highlight website of the month.
Without the expertise and guidance of Dr. Mark Laufersweiler, students at the University of Oklahoma would not have an appreciation for the computing power available to them or the data and software available from Unidata.
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