Ward Fisher joined the Unidata Program Center software development staff on March 12th, 2012. Ward brings a wide variety of research and software development experience to the team, having designed systems for facial recognition, image processing, and data compression. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in Computer Science form Colorado State University, and also has a background in mathematics and statistics.
Ward comes to Unidata most recently from InfoPrint Solutions (a division of Ricoh), in Boulder, Colorado where he was a software engineer and image processing researcher. He was attracted to Unidata partly by its ties to the academic community. "What makes Unidata such an attractive place to work is the academic atmosphere and the interesting research being conducted here," he says. "There are many opportunities to increase my scientific knowledge while making concrete contributions to the scientific/research community. I really enjoy conducting my own research as well as supporting other scientists and researchers through scientific software development."
"I'm also pursuing interests in data mining and big data," Ward continues. "I'm excited to be working on the netCDF project, as there appears to be very fertile ground in the big data arena. I'm looking forward to applying my research background and making a meaningful contribution to core netCDF functionality."
Ward is also intrigued by the Unidata program's Open Source direction, which he calls "very refreshing after working so long in a closed environment."
Please join us in welcoming Ward to the Unidata Program Center!
