Note: The deadline for nominations for Unidata committee appointments beginning in the fall of 2019 has been extended until July 7, 2019.

Unidata Users and Strategic Advisory Committees

Unidata is governed by its community. Our governing committees facilitate consensus-building for future directions of the Unidata Program and establish standards of involvement for the community. Direct involvement in the Program by the academic community helps Unidata stay on top of trends in education and research; for example, recent initiatives on Python and cloud-based computing have benefitted tremendously from committee advice and involvement.

The Unidata Program Center is seeking new people to serve on Unidata's Strategic Advisory and Users Committees. This is your chance to make a difference on behalf of the Unidata community. As Sepideh Yalda, the current Chair of the Unidata Strategic Advisory Committee notes, “Unidata has and continues to serve a critical role in providing data and services to the earth and related sciences community. The opportunity to serve as a member on Unidata governance committees provides you with the ability to contribute and help guide the future developments in data sharing and the associated services in support of research and education in atmospheric sciences.”

Unidata Users and Strategic Advisory Committees

Unidata is governed by its community. Our governing committees facilitate consensus-building for future directions of the Unidata Program and establish standards of involvement for the community. Direct involvement in the Program by the academic community helps Unidata stay on top of trends in education and research; for example, recent initiatives on Python and cloud-based computing have benefitted tremendously from committee advice and involvement.

The Unidata Program Center is seeking new people to serve on Unidata's Strategic Advisory and Users Committees. This is your chance to make a difference on behalf of the Unidata community. As Sepideh Yalda, the current Chair of the Unidata Strategic Advisory Committee notes, “Unidata has and continues to serve a critical role in providing data and services to the earth and related sciences community. The opportunity to serve as a member on Unidata governance committees provides you with the ability to contribute and help guide the future developments in data sharing and the associated services in support of research and education in atmospheric sciences.”

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to announce the availability of a JupyterHub server tailored to the needs of the atmospheric science community. Using resources provided by the National Science Foundation's Jetstream cloud-computing platform, Unidata's JupyterHub server is intended to serve as a demonstration of a notebook-based workflow for geoscience activities. After preliminary testing in a variety of situations including workshop and classroom use, Unidata staff are looking to expand beta-testing of the server to the wider community.

The 11th Annual International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE 11) will take place 24-27 September, 2019, in Florence, Italy. The conference will include a scientific program with technical paper sessions, invited talks, joint sessions with sister organizations, panels, an exhibition, and social events. The theme of the 2019 event is “Digital Earth in a Transformed Society,” celebrating and investigating the virtual representation of our planet as a multidisciplinary collaborative effort that engages different sciences (e.g. Earth, Space, Information, and Human sciences) to monitor and forecast natural and human phenomena.

The Call for Abstracts is in progress. Submitters have until 31 January 2019 to submit papers and posters for consideration.

Unidata offers equipment grants to support a variety of projects

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to announce the opening of the 2019 Unidata Community Equipment Awards solicitation. Created under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, Unidata equipment awards are intended to encourage new members from diverse disciplinary backgrounds in the geosciences to join the Unidata community, and to encourage existing members to continue their active participation, enhancing the community process. For 2019, a total of $100,000 is available for awards; proposals for amounts up to $20,000 will be considered.

Past recipients of Unidata equipment awards have used the grants to procure equipment for data sharing, to create interactive data visualization laboratories, and to encourage the use of Unidata software packages in research and education. Read on for information about areas that will be given special consideration for the 2019 grants.