Zach Bruick joined the Unidata Program Center (UPC) team on June 3, 2019 as a Software Engineer. After finishing his Master's degree in Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University in May, he has jumped in to apply his talents to Unidata's mix of science, software development, and training activities.
Zach earned a Bachelor's degree in Meteorology — along with a major in Geography and a minor in Mathematics — from Valparaiso University before heading to Colorado State. He first encountered Unidata while working with GEMPAK and the LDM as part of Valparaiso's undergraduate meteorology curriculum, and he's been immersed in the scientific Python ecosystem since his Junior year. In addition to his university coursework, Zach has honed his scientific skills through student research and internship positions with NASA and NOAA.
A month after his arrival, Zach was able to join other Unidata developers at the SciPy (Scientific Computing with Python) conference in Austin, TX. “It was neat to see how Python is used in other scientific disciplines, and not just meteorology,” he says “We were able to network with people who are creating interesting pacakages and tools for a variety of disciplines.”
Here at Unidata, Zach will be working to maintain and develop MetPy and Unidata's other Python projects. “I'll be working on making MetPy and Siphon more full-featured and easy to use,” says Zach. “In the immediate future I'll be working on making our Python training repositories more cohesive and useful.”
Away from the office, Zach loves being outside in Colorado, doing as much hiking as possible, and chasing storms when he gets the chance. Showing his midwestern roots, he follows the Chicago Cubs and the Nebraska Cornhuskers who, he jokes, “never fail to let me down.”
Please help us welcome Zach to the Unidata Program Center Team!
