Advisory Committees

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

Our community advisory structure has two arms:

• The Strategic Advisory Committee provides a “Big Picture” perspective, helping the NSF Unidata Program better understand data and technology trends within the university Earth Systems Sciences community.
• The Users Committee is the primary mechanism for gaining insight into the needs of educators, students, and researchers, and for gathering feedback on the effectiveness of the NSF Unidata Program.

We seek to engage creative people at U.S. universities and colleges who are using NSF Unidata products and services — or who are otherwise familiar with NSF Unidata — to help guide the program in addressing the needs of our broadening community. We need the insights of active educators and researchers to spot new opportunities and take advantage of the expanding range of scientific data. We're looking for help identifying new tools and services — along with improvements to our existing offerings — that will advance the scientific and educational goals of the community.