Zach Bruick joined the Unidata Program Center (UPC) team on June 3, 2019 as a Software Engineer. After finishing his Master's degree in Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University in May, he has jumped in to apply his talents to Unidata's mix of science, software development, and training activities.
Zach earned a Bachelor's degree in Meteorology — along with a major in Geography and a minor in Mathematics — from Valparaiso University before heading to Colorado State. He first encountered Unidata while working with GEMPAK and the LDM as part of Valparaiso's undergraduate meteorology curriculum, and he's been immersed in the scientific Python ecosystem since his Junior year. In addition to his university coursework, Zach has honed his scientific skills through student research and internship positions with NASA and NOAA.
The Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) version 5.6 is now available. This is a major release with new features including an isentropic advection derived parameter, a 3D streamline display, new display types for the 3D grid tracer display, and a chooser for Geostationary Lightning Mapper data from ADDE servers. In addition, the release includes updates to existing features and incorporates the latest netCDF-Java library.
NetCDF has historically offered two different storage formats for the netCDF data model: files based on the original netCDF binary format, and files based on the HDF5 format. While this has proven effective in the past for traditional disk storage, it is less efficient for modern cloud-focused technologies such as those provided by Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud Object Storage, and other cloud service providers. To that end, the Unidata development team is happy to announce that we are expanding the storage solutions available through the netCDF software libraries.
Note: The deadline for nominations for Unidata committee appointments beginning in the fall of 2019 has been extended until July 7, 2019.
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.”
Max Grover joined the Unidata Program Center as a software development summer intern on May 20, 2019. Max graduated with Bachelor of Science degree from Valparaiso University in May 2019, and will be attending the University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign in the fall to study for a Master's Degree in Atmospheric Science. This summer he'll be working on adding functionality to the MetPy package, initially by adding a METAR parser to aid in the creation of surface plots.
Jessica Blunt joined the Unidata Program Center as a software development summer intern on May 20, 2019. Jessica is currently an undergraduate Meteorology student with minor concentrations in Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma; she'll be graduating in December of 2019. This summer, she'll be focusing on producing updated and additional IDV tutorial videos for Unidata's YouTube channel, as well as working with the IDV codebase to make additions and improvements.
Aodhan Sweeney joined the Unidata Program Center as a software development summer intern on May 20, 2019. Aodhan graduated from Florida State University in May 2019 with a bachelor's degree in Physics; he will be starting a Ph.D. program in Atmospheric Science at the University of Washington in the fall. This summer, Aodhan will be working to extend Unidata's siphon package, with the goal of making publicly-available atmospheric datasets more accessible.
The State University of New York at Albany in Albany, New York will be hosting a Unidata Regional Software Training Workshop May 29-30, 2019. Unidata software developers will be leading the two-day Python-focused workshop, which will cover the use of the MetPy and Siphon packages in the context of atmospheric science. A basic familiarity with Python is assumed.
Unidata holds regional workshops in part to facilitate easy access to software training for those who may not be able to travel to training workshops held at the Unidata Program Center in Boulder, Colorado. Attendance is explicitly not limited to University at Albany students and staff; we encourage those within easy travel distance to consider attending.
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.
As part of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, CO, Unidata offers competitive salaries and great benefits. UCAR was selected as one of the Best Companies to Work For in Colorado. Simply put, Unidata is a great place to work. Unidata's team environment provides high levels of autonomy and responsibility with great opportunity to excel individually and contribute to the team's success.
