In case you missed it — here's a wrap-up of news from the Unidata Program Center for the month of January, 2013.

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 2013 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 2013, a total of $100,000 is available for awards; proposals for amounts up to $20,000 will be considered.

Applications are invited from early career scientists to participate in the 2013 Pan American Advanced Studies Institute (PASI) on Atmospheric Processes in Latin America and the Caribbean: Observations, Analysis, and Impacts — a two-week short course on atmospheric processes of Latin America and the Caribbean, to be held in Cartagena, Colombia, from 27 May to 7 June 2013.

In case you missed it — here's a wrap-up of news from the Unidata Program Center for the month of December, 2012.

Members of the Unidata Program Center staff will be attending the 93nd annual American Meteorology Society meeting, January 6-10 2013, in Austin, Texas. Unidata will be in Booth 524 in the exhibit hall (map); feel free to stop by to talk with us. The booth will feature live, hands-on demonstrations of Unidata software and services, including a look at the current state of the AWIPS II environment. Come and talk with the developers about what's coming up and what you'd like to see.

Visualization is an increasingly important activity for understanding complex geoscience data, and for communicating results to a variety of audiences. As a result, the European Geoscience Union (EGU) conference has, in recent years, begun holding sessions dedicated to scientific visualization. For the 2013 EGU conference, to be held in Vienna, Austria from 7-12 April, 2013, this offering is being expanded into a full sub-programme titled Visualization for scientific discovery and communication.

The abstract submission deadline for the conference is January 9th, 2013.

Rutgers students use real-time data to pilot an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

The Coastal Ocean Observation Lab at Rutgers University (RU-COOL) is using Unidata and other open source technologies to collect, process, and make available a wide range of ocean data for use by students and researchers. Their collection of real-time and historical oceanographic datasets will aid in understanding the physical and biological ocean processes impacting the Mid-Atlantic region, leading to improvements in maritime safety and ecosystem-based management strategies.

Joint Committee

Members of Unidata's two governing committees gathered in Boulder in September 2012 for a joint meeting to share information and ideas between the committees and with Unidata Program Center staff.

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to welcome six new members to the program's governing committees. Committee members normally serve three-year terms; terms are finishing up for three members of the Users committee and three members of the Policy committee. New members and those finishing their terms will overlap for one meeting, which will take place in mid-September, 2012.

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 for the September meeting.

The following provides a brief introduction to the scientists joining Unidata's committees. You can find additional information about the governing committees, including contact information for committee members, on the Governing Committees page.