Christian Ward-Garrison

Christian Ward-Garrison joined the Unidata Program Center software development staff on December 2, 2013 — just in time to join in the UPC staff's annual white elephant gift exchange and holiday celebration.

Christian earned a Bachelor's degree in Mathematical and Computer Sciences from the Colorado School of Mines, and comes to Unidata from the U.S. Geological Survey in Lakewood, Colorado. There, he used Unidata products extensively to assist in modeling of watershed systems.

It was the strongest cyclone to hit land in recorded history. On November 8, 2013, Typhoon Haiyan slammed into the Philippines, whipping the low-lying and densely-populated islands with 200 mph winds and sending a two-story-high storm surge flooding into homes, schools, and hospitals. It wiped villages off the map and devastated cities, including the hard-hit provincial capital Tacloban. Estimates count more than 5,000 dead and millions homeless.

The Unidata Program Center's Jeff Weber is one of the scientists who looks into what made Typhoon Haiyan so destructive in the NOVA documentary Killer Typhoon, which will air on PBS Wednesday, January 22, 2104 on PBS. Weber uses the Unidata Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) to look at the storm.

Check your local PBS listings to see when Killer Typhoon is showing in your area.

In case you missed it — here's a recap of news from the Unidata Program Center for the month of December, 2013.

Do you use Unidata software packages? Do you love to write code? The Unidata Summer Internship program is looking for you!

The Unidata Summer Internship offers undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to work with Unidata software engineers and scientists on projects drawn from a wide variety of areas in the atmospheric and computational sciences. Unidata's mission is to support the Earth Science research and education community with data and tools for data access, analysis, and visualization. As a Unidata intern, you'll pursue the goal of adding innovative enhancements to data access, analysis, and visualization tools developed within Unidata.

The Unidata Program receives the majority of its funding from the National Science Foundation. Every five years, the program submits a new proposal to the NSF, outlining past accomplishments and describing plans for future activities. We recently received word from the NSF that Unidata's most recent five-year proposal had been accepted and funded.

While much of the work proposed involves the continuation and extension of existing programs, projects, and services, the proposal does chart a new direction for the program; namely the provision of data and services through the "cloud" mechanisms that are becoming ubiquitous.