Russ DeSouza with students

Do you know someone in the Unidata community who has been actively involved and helpful to you and other Unidata members? Perhaps this is someone who volunteers to assist others, contributes software, or makes suggestions that are generally useful for the community.

The Unidata Users Committee invites you to submit nominations for the Russell L. DeSouza Award for Outstanding Community Service. This Community Service Award honors individuals whose energy, expertise, and active involvement enable the Unidata Program to better serve the geosciences. Honorees personify Unidata's ideal of a community that shares ideas, data, and software through computing and networking technologies.

Unidata offers equipment grants to support a variety of projects

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to announce the opening of the 2019 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 2019, a total of $100,000 is available for awards; proposals for amounts up to $20,000 will be considered.

Past recipients of Unidata equipment awards have used the grants to procure equipment for data sharing, to create interactive data visualization laboratories, and to encourage the use of Unidata software packages in research and education. Read on for information about areas that will be given special consideration for the 2019 grants.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) WMO Global Campus is the collaborative network of WMO Member institutions and National Meteorological Hydrological Services involved in the development and delivery of education and training. Its goal is to address the evolving global priorities for learning. It is the fruit of the synergies, sharing and cooperation within this community of institutions. In keeping with the concept of a WMO Global Campus as a community of practice, WMO is initiating the publication of a volume of short papers describing case studies of innovations implemented by partners in the Education and Training Programme (ETRP).

The 11th Annual International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE 11) will take place 24-27 September, 2019, in Florence, Italy. The conference will include a scientific program with technical paper sessions, invited talks, joint sessions with sister organizations, panels, an exhibition, and social events. The theme of the 2019 event is “Digital Earth in a Transformed Society,” celebrating and investigating the virtual representation of our planet as a multidisciplinary collaborative effort that engages different sciences (e.g. Earth, Space, Information, and Human sciences) to monitor and forecast natural and human phenomena.

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to welcome new members to the program's governing committees. Committee members serve three-year terms, meeting twice each year to provide feedback on the effectiveness of the Unidata Program and advise staff on issues facing the university community. Appointments reflect the range of large and small colleges and universities with undergraduate and graduate emphases where Unidata systems are in use.

The UPC staff looks forward to working with our new committee members!

The abstract submission deadline for the 18th Annual AMS Student Conference (5-6 January 2019) is approaching! The theme is “Weathering Together: Building a Climate of Diverse Community Perspectives.” All current AMS student members are encouraged to submit their abstracts for the conference poster session by 2 October 2018.

Steven Lazarus

Steven Lazarus of the Florida Institute of Technology has been awarded the 2018 Russell L. DeSouza Award by the Unidata Users committee. The DeSouza Award honors “individuals whose energy, expertise, and active involvement enable the Unidata Program to better serve the geosciences.”

San Jose State University in San Jose, California will be hosting a Unidata Regional Software Training Workshop October 4-5, 2018. Unidata software developers will be leading the 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 site 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 San Jose State students and staff; we encourage those within easy travel distance to consider attending.