Here at the Unidata Program Center, we know that geoscience data is important to you, and we want to do all we can to keep you informed as the efforts to slow the spread of coronavirus continue.

Although we are dedicated to maintaining community access to our data services, the National Science Foundation has not declared the Program Center to be critical infrastructure. Access to our physical location is currently highly restricted. As a result, Unidata will be providing

at least until social distancing recommendations are eased.

Unidata’s Science Gateway can provide cloud-based JupyterHub servers tailored to the needs of university atmospheric science courses. Because many universities are responding to local public health mandates related to the COVID-19 epidemic by transitioning to the use of remote-learning techniques and online-only courses, Unidata is encouraging community members to evaluate whether this no-cost resource can benefit their students during the Spring term.

The Unidata Users Committee is organizing a series of regional workshops designed to follow the 2018 Unidata Users Workshop Reducing Time to Science: Evolving Workflows for Geoscience Research and Education. These follow-on workshops will explore tools to access data and strategies for teaching computational concepts. Each one-day workshop will bring together geoscience educators, pedagogical experts, and Unidata staff to discuss and share best practices for helping students engage in data-enabled science.

Registration is available now.

This year's annual American Meteorological Society meeting was held 12-16 January 2020 in Boston, Massachusetts. Unidata Program Center staff were happy to be able to attend as presenters of talks and posters, conveners of sessions, and facilitators of workshops and short courses for students, educators, and researchers. Staff members also spent time meeting community members in the new exhibit hall booth bringing together a variety of UCAR and NCAR programs in one space. As always, we were also glad to meet so many prospective community members at the AMS Student Conference.

With so much going on at the conference, we can't cover everything here. Instead, we present some highlights as recalled by UPC staff members who attended.

Russ DeSouza with students

Do you know someone in the Unidata community who has been actively involved and helpful to you and other Unidata members? Perhaps this is someone who volunteers to assist others, contributes software, or makes suggestions that are generally useful for the community.

The Unidata Users Committee invites you to submit nominations for the Russell L. DeSouza Award for Outstanding Community Service. This Community Service Award honors individuals whose energy, expertise, and active involvement enable the Unidata Program to better serve the geosciences. Honorees personify Unidata's ideal of a community that shares ideas, data, and software through computing and networking technologies. While direct involvement in the Unidata community is one avenue by which such a contribution may be made, this is not a requirement — the distinguishing ethos of awardees is their contribution and dedication to accessible and reproducible science and education in the geosciences.