Stonie Cooper joined the Unidata Program Center staff on October 3rd, 2022, as a software engineer. Stonie comes from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), where he was a faculty applied meteorologist/climatologist, managing the Nebraska Mesonet.
Stonie earned a bachelor's degree in natural science education and meteorology at UNL before a brief stray into atmospheric chemistry as a PhD student at Georgia Tech. He returned to UNL's School of Natural Resources to finish his doctoral work, focusing on climate assessments and impacts. He's spent most of his career in the private sector, with experience in operational meteorology, severe weather forecasting, climatology, and climate adjacent industries. His technical expertise in satellite communications, IT security, data warehousing, and machine learning adaptations will all come into play at the Program Center.
Mike Zuranski joined Unidata on September 19, 2022 as a data engineer. He may already be familiar to many in the Unidata community; Mike comes to the team from the College of DuPage, where he has worked to support the IT needs of their meteorology program and helped to develop and maintain the very popular Nexlab website. He received his A.S. degree with a focus on Meteorology, and a certification in Weather Hazards and Preparedness from the College of DuPage as well.
Megan Lerman joined Unidata on August 29, 2022 as a software engineer. She graduated from San Diego State University in 2018 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Statistics, along with a minor in Computer Science. After graduating, Megan worked as a software engineer for the US Navy for four years before coming to UCAR.
Thomas Martin joined Unidata on July 11, 2022 as an AI/ML software engineer. He is currently finishing up a PhD in Geology at Colorado School of Mines, and has previously completed a BS in geology from University of California, San Diego and a MS in geophysics from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Before his PhD, he worked as a geophysicist working on geothermal, groundwater, and energy projects.
Tanya Vance joined the Unidata Program Center as Community Services Manager on May 31, 2022. She comes to Unidata from the New Zealand Department of Conservation/Te Papa Atawhai (DOC) where she served as the manager of the National Freshwater Ecosystems & Threats Team. While at DOC, she co-lead national and cross-agency strategy development, provided oversight and advising on climate and ecological programs, and the development of national-scale watershed restoration projects co-designed and co-led with Indigenous Tribal Partners and in collaboration with a wide variety of community stakeholders.
Tara Drwenski joined the Unidata Program Center software development team on February 28, 2022. After obtaining a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Physics at the University of Tulsa, Tara did a Master's and PhD in Theoretical Physics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, completing her PhD in 2018.
Bobby Espinoza joined the Unidata Program Center's software development team on February, 7 2022. Bobby majored in Physics and Mathematics at Texas Tech University, and worked as an engineering physicist with a start-up firm in Lubbock, TX before being admitted into Texas Tech's Atmospheric Science program. They received their Master's degree in Atmospheric Science in 2021.
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.
