Rio McMahon joined the Unidata Program Center on May 17th, 2021 as a Machine Learning Specialist. This is a new area of focus for the Unidata Program, and Rio will be helping to identify ways in which machine learning can be leveraged to support geoscience research.
A Nevada native, Rio earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Nevada, Reno before becoming a structural engineer. He plied his trade as a registered Professional Engineer in California before moving to Boulder to pursue a Master's degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Colorado. His thesis work involving multi-agent reinforcement learning led to his receiving his MS in May of 2021.
Nicole Corbin joined the Unidata Program Center on February 1st, 2021 as an Educational Designer. Prior to joining Unidata, Nicole created learning content and educational experiences for technical support staff at Esri focusing on desktop GIS, Microsoft Windows administration, Python, and customer service. Nicole is passionate about instructional design and is always keeping up on the latest in learning sciences. Her professional interests include adult learning theories, inquiry-based learning, and modular/micro-learning.
Although she's been working in the GIS sector for the past five years, Nicole's background is in meteorology. She received both her Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Meteorology from North Carolina State University. It was there that she first became interested in discipline-based education research and pedagogy, and was able to experiment with creating educational content for university students. Her very first educational module covered hail growth processes. Now, at Unidata, she is excited to continue creating learning and outreach content for the greater Earth systems science community.
Hailey Johnson joined the Unidata software development team on August 17th, 2020. Hailey majored in Computer Science and Earth and Ocean Science at Duke University, and briefly worked as a DevOps Engineer at Microsoft before enrolling in the Geological Sciences graduate program at the University of Florida. She will receive her Ph.D. in December, 2020.
Hailey's doctoral work focused on coastal morphology and nearshore oceanography, with minor focuses in both Computer Engineering and Educational Technology. She is excited to join Unidata because its mission fits so well with her passion for leveraging software to support the earth science community in both research and outreach.
Tiffany Meyer joined the Unidata Program Center software development team on May 18th, 2020. Before joining Unidata, Tiffany had been at the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS) — a collaborative research facility sponsored by the University of Oklahoma — for the past 8 years. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma, and a Master of Science degree in Atmospheric Science with a focus on lightning from Colorado State University.
Drew Camron joined the Unidata Program Center software development team on February 18th, 2020. Drew majored in Meteorology and Physics with a minor in Mathematics at Mississippi State University before coming to the University of Colorado for graduate studies in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science. He received his Master's degree in 2019.
Drew's graduate work included modeling atmospheric gravity waves before shifting to study modeled and observed satellite measurements of climate-scale precipitation patterns over the Greenland Ice Sheet. But his scientific work showed him a parallel path. “My time in school taught me that my motivation and excitement came from developing tools (especially software) that can help teach or enable other people to do exciting science,” he says.
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.
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.
Howard Van Dam joined the Unidata Program Center (UPC) team on January 14 2019 as a Software Engineer. A Colorado native, he has explored the wonders of the state from the highest mountains to the eastern plains.
Howard started out studying music at University, but switched to electronics and electrical engineering as a way to provide an income while continuing to enjoy performing in jazz, classical, and musical theatre settings. He received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Colorado after completing degrees at Pikes Peak and Front Range Community Colleges. Howard also holds a CompTIA Security+ certification and is passionate about all things cybersecurity.
Cece Hedrick joined the Unidata Program Center (UPC) team on October 16th, 2017 as a software developer. Her first day at the office coincided with the joint meeting of Unidata's Users' and Strategic Advisory Committees, so … we pretty much threw her in the deep end of the pool. On the bright side, Cece got an instant introduction to the community we're working for.
Cece studied astrophysics and computer science at the University of Nebraska. As an astronomer she has worked in a wide range of research categories from supermassive black holes, circumstellar disks, and symbiotic stars to the Martian atmosphere as part of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. As a computer scientist she has also explored a wide range of research topics, such as, bioinformatics, modeling and simulation for war gaming, and user experience/human computer interaction within the learning sciences. As a software developer, Cece has previously worked on military secure messaging and data transfer solutions, cable television software product continuous integration, and space weather prediction and analysis software.
John Leeman joined the Unidata Program Center software development team on January 30th, 2017. John obtained bachelor's degrees in meteorology and geophysics from the University of Oklahoma in 2012, and a PhD in geoscience from Penn State in 2017. He has worked in research fields ranging from gas hydrate thermodynamics to SODAR and boundary layer instrumentation, and did his doctoral work in earthquake physics. John's software development experience includes work on the seafloor process simulator at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and telemetry analysis tools for NASA's Morpheus lunar lander project. The common thread amongst all of these projects was “the development of new tools and software to attack previously intractable problems.”
As a researcher himself, John brings first-hand knowledge of how scientists want to interact with their research tools to Unidata. He joined the Unidata Program Center because, he says, “making well tested and reliable tools with which to conduct reproducible science is probably the largest challenge and most needed area of innovation in research today.”
