Unidata offers equipment grants to support a variety of projects
The Unidata Program Center is pleased to announce the opening of the 2017 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 2017, a total of $100,000 is available for awards; proposals for amounts up to $20,000 will be considered.
The Unidata Program Center is pleased to welcome new members to the program's governing committees. Committee members normally serve three-year terms; terms are finishing up for one member of the Users committee and two members of the Strategic Advisory committee. Additionally, a seat on the Strategic Advisory Committee that has been empty since the fall of 2014 is being filled. New members and those finishing their terms will overlap for one meeting: September 26-27 for the Users Committee and October 6-7 for the Strategic Advisory Committee.
The UPC staff looks forward to working with our new committee members, and to having all the current members of both committees at the Program Center in Boulder, Colorado this fall.
A workshop on The Rescue of Data At Risk will be held in Boulder, Colorado, on 8-9 September 2016, in association with International Data Week, taking place the following week in Denver.
The workshop is being organized by the joint CODATA Task Group for Data At Risk and the RDA Interest Group for Data Rescue, and is being hosted by NCAR.
The NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Central Operations is looking to hire an Information Technology Specialist. The position is in College Park, MD.
In the summer of 2015, from June 1st to July 15th, a fleet of scientists set out each evening in the Midwest. Their goal? To gain insight on the nocturnal mesoscale convective storms (MCS's) that plague America's heartland. While MCS's are necessary for irrigation and the replenishing of aquifers, often these storms can become vicious; especially at night when they are least detected.
With the implementation of the field experiment PECAN (Plains Elevated Convection at Night) scientists from eight research laboratories and fourteen Universities including Millersville University of Pennsylvania hope to gain insight to better predict these nocturnal storms. After the data were collected, the Unidata Program Center (UPC) worked closely with Millersville students and academic staff to help standardize their PECAN study data.
Thanks to a 2015 Unidata Community Equipment Award grant, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Atmospheric Science Program has been able to acquire a dedicated AWIPS II Environmental Data EXchange (EDEX) server and three Common AWIPS Visualization Environment (CAVE) workstations. The machines were deployed in our Atmospheric Science computer lab in mid-August 2015, just prior to the start of the 2015-16 academic year. Over the past year, our program has seen maximum benefit from these resources in two areas: strengthening our partnership with the Milwaukee/Sullivan, Wisconsin National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office (MKX) and as a tool to enhance student development outside of a formal classroom setting.
Earlier this year, the Unidata Users Committee asked members of the Unidata community to participate in a survey regarding their use of scientific software packages, software training, and community services, and to favor us with their insights into possible future directions for the program. You can read an overview of the survey results in 2016 Community Survey Results.
While Unidata's governing committees and the Unidata Program Center staff will continue to analyze the survey comments in the process of crafting Unidata's next Strategic Plan, individual Program Center development groups are also using the survey as input into their own development plans. This series of articles provides responses from different development groups to comments or concerns raised by the survey. Under review in this article: Python activities at Unidata.
Earlier this year, the Unidata Users Committee asked members of the Unidata community to participate in a survey regarding their use of scientific software packages, software training, and community services, and to favor us with their insights into possible future directions for the program. The survey ran through early February, and collected responses from 261 individuals from 25 countries. Both the Users Committee and the Unidata Program Center staff thank those who completed the survey for taking the time to participate and for providing such thoughtful feedback.
The survey comprised 107 questions on a variety of topics (although the survey was structured to allow respondents to skip over sections in which they had little interest or expertise). Read on for a summary and access to the full survey results.
Several members of the Unidata Program Center staff will be attending the 2016 European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly. The meeting takes place 17-22 April 2016 in Vienna, Austria.
Read on for a schedule listing sessions at which Unidata staff will be presenting or attending.
Larissa Gordon joined the Unidata Program Center as a summer communication intern on March 14th, 2016. Larissa has just completed her Bachelor's degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in Evolutionary Biology; she also earned minors in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science and Creative Writing, Fiction Studies.
Her primary interest in her undergraduate career was the interaction between biota and climate, specifically in a marine environment.
