Jessica Souza joined the Unidata Program Center as a student summer intern on May 22, 2023. She completed her undergraduate in Meteorology at the University of São Paulo and her Master's degree in Atmospheric Science at Texas Tech University. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD in Geosciences with a minor in Mathematics at Texas Tech University.
“It has been rewarding to explore tools and methods to solve problems and to create visualizations to highlight specific results,” says Jessica. “The rapid increase of the amount of available data demands skills to create efficient, reproducible and well-documented code. This opportunity will allow me to learn software engineering best practices from Unidata software engineers and scientists, and incorporate these valuable skills into my PhD research and future work.”
This summer, Jessica will be working with Unidata's THREDDS Data Server development team. “I will be working in implementing preprocessing steps such as filtering and scaling on the raw datasets available for download. This will provide the user the option to download the dataset containing preprocessed variables for more straight forward applications in AI/ML,” she says.
Jessica will also be contributing to the MetPy project. “I’m interested in improving the accessibility of Metpy Mondays weekly code tutorials. There is a persistent demand for the material used in the videos, and making it more easily accessible would allow students and educators to take full advantage of Metpy Mondays' rich archive,” says Jessica. Having the Metpy Mondays codebase available will also facilitate code maintenance and ensure the long-term reproducibility of the tutorials. In addition, “understanding users' feedback based on comments, likes, and views could help drive the approach and topics covered in future videos,” she adds.
Aside from working at Unidata this summer, Jessica can’t wait to explore the hikes in Boulder. When she is not coding or working on her research, you can find her drinking matcha, doing High Intensity Interval Training, and learning German, French, and Swedish.
Please join us in welcoming Jessica to the Program Center for the summer!
