Here at the Unidata Program Center, we know that geoscience data is important to you, and we want to do all we can to keep you informed as the efforts to slow the spread of coronavirus continue.
Although we are dedicated to maintaining community access to our data services, the National Science Foundation has not declared the Program Center to be critical infrastructure. Access to our physical location is currently highly restricted. As a result, Unidata will be providing
geoscience data for pickup1 and delivery2 only
at least until social distancing recommendations are eased.
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.
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. We are looking for creative people at U.S. universities and colleges who are using Unidata products and services — or who are familiar with 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. This is a chance for you to make a difference on behalf of the Unidata community.
Unidata's Science Gateway can provide cloud-based JupyterHub servers tailored to the needs of university atmospheric science courses. Because many universities are responding to local public health mandates related to the COVID-19 epidemic by transitioning to the use of remote-learning techniques and online-only courses, Unidata is encouraging community members to evaluate whether this no-cost resource can benefit their students during the Spring term.
The University of Alaska, Fairbanks will be hosting a Unidata Regional Software Training Workshop April 22-23, 2020. 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 — check out the Unidata Online Python Training for a refresher.
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 local students and staff; we encourage those within the state of Alaska to consider attending. Financial support is available for those that must travel from outside Fairbanks.
