Members of the Unidata Program Center staff will be attending the American Geophysical Union 2019 Fall meeting, December 9-13 2019, in San Francisco, CA. Read on to see specific sessions at which UPC staff will be presenting or in attendance.

In addition to presenting talks and poster sessions, Unidata staff will be spending time at the UCAR/NCAR booth in the Exhibit Hall. Stop by for one of the scheduled demonstrations of Unidata software packages or just to chat about your data needs, summer internship opportunities, or the Unidata Equipment Awards!

Unidata offers computer equipment grants to support a variety of projects

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to announce the opening of the 2020 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 2020, a total of $100,000 is available for awards; proposals for amounts up to $20,000 will be considered.

Note:
In keeping with Unidata's most recent proposal to the National Science Foundation for continued program funding, additional emphasis will be placed on providing support for institutions serving populations that are underrepresented in the broad geoscience community. Unidata is dedicated to broadening participation by minority serving institutions, and we particularly encourage small institutions, academic departments that have not previously submitted proposals to this program, and programs outside Unidata's traditional atmospheric sciences community to apply.

The Unidata Program Center is hiring! We are looking for a Python developer to join our team in creating and maintaining software and data services to support the geosciences.

We are looking for a Python developer to help us help our community of scientists access the Earth system science data that fuels their research. As a member of the Python team, you will collaborate with other Unidata developers to test, support, maintain, and develop Unidata open source software products and real-time data streams.

Pete Pokrandt of the University of Wisconsin, Madison has been awarded the 2019 Russell L. DeSouza Award by the Unidata Users committee. The DeSouza Award honors “individuals whose energy, expertise, and active involvement enable the Unidata Program to better serve the geosciences.”

Pokrandt has been supporting the needs of geoscience data users at the University of Wisconsin and around the Unidata community since the 1990s; he served on the Unidata Users Committee from 2015 through 2018.

Shay Carter joined the Unidata team on September 3rd, 2019 as a Software Engineer and Programmer. Originally from Canada, she moved from Phoenix, Arizona to take over this new position.

Shay earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from Arizona State University (ASU). Her undergraduate studies consisted of a major in Earth and Space Exploration, with a minor in Computational Mathematical Sciences. She also graduated from Barrett, the Honors College at ASU. She went on to pursue a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering, where she studied stem cells and developed her own genetic quantification algorithm and program in Java. She has spent the last 9 years working at the Mars Space Flight Facility at ASU, and has primarily been a Software Developer on the JMARS GIS program.