Kristen Pozsonyi joined the Unidata Program Center team as a software development summer intern May 23rd, 2016. Kristen is currently working on her Bachelor's degree in Meteorology from Millersville University, with minors in Computer Science and Mathematics.
The Unidata Summer Internships offer undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to work with Unidata software engineers and scientists on projects drawn from a wide variety of areas in the atmospheric and computational sciences.
At Millersville, Kristen's primary focus is on severe weather research. In 2015, she took part in the PECAN (Plains Elevated Convection At Night) field campaign, a collaborative effort between fourteen universities and eight research laboratories. The PECAN project shared the common goal of better understanding the nocturnal mesoscale convective systems that can strongly affect the midwest during the summer months.
“Being a part of the PECAN project was a life changing experience, and I hope that I have the opportunity to conduct more research in the future,” says Kristen.
Among other tasks, Kristen's main focus during her internship will be improving the MetPy software package.
She will be developing calculation functions within Metpy to increase the package's ease of use for atmospheric scientists. For example, Kristen is adding functionality to solve for wind speed when only the u and v vectors are supplied. Kristen is also developing plots that map a variety of meteorological parameters within Metpy, creating a more interactive visual display for the end user.
In addition to interning at Unidata, Kristen also looks forward to exploring all that the city of Boulder has to offer during her stay this summer, as well as getting outside to enjoy the beautiful Colorado weather.
Please join us in welcoming Kristen to the Program Center for the summer!
