Unidata summer 2014 interns Shawn Cheeks and Florita Rodriguez.

The Unidata Program Center is happy to be hosting two student interns this summer: Florita Rodriguez from Texas A&M Univeristy in College Station, TX, and Shawn Cheeks from Marshall University in Huntington, WV.

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.

Josh Young

Josh Young joined the Unidata Program Center as the Community Services Manager on March 10, 2014. He comes to Unidata from the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in Washington, D.C. where he served as the Program Manager for the Interagency Ocean Observation Committee Support Office (IOOC SO). At the IOOC SO, he supported member agencies in coordinating federal ocean observing and engaging the broader science community.

Josh first encountered Unidata products at the IOOC SO, where one of his duties was supporting the Data Management and Communications Steering Team. From the beginning, it was obvious that the Steering Team thought highly of Unidata, but all of the technical terms that members used were very unfamiliar and confusing. After several years, Josh became thoroughly accustomed to being confused during data-management conversations.

Unidata's AMS booth

This year's annual American Meteorological Society meeting in Atlanta, Georgia hosted nearly 3500 attendees, who fortuitously missed the serious winter storms that occurred shortly before and after the conference. We were happy to see many of the Unidata community members participating in the meeting at our booth in the exhibit hall, and to meet so many prospective community members at the AMS Student Conference.

With so much going on at the conference, we can't cover everything here. Instead, we present some highlights as recalled by UPC staff members who attended.

Ryan May

Ryan May joined the Unidata Program Center software development staff on January 6th, 2013. He comes to Unidata from the University of Oklahoma, where he completed his bachelor's and master's degrees in Meteorology, and where he'll be finishing up his doctoral dissertation "sometime later this year."

Christian Ward-Garrison

Christian Ward-Garrison joined the Unidata Program Center software development staff on December 2, 2013 — just in time to join in the UPC staff's annual white elephant gift exchange and holiday celebration.

Christian earned a Bachelor's degree in Mathematical and Computer Sciences from the Colorado School of Mines, and comes to Unidata from the U.S. Geological Survey in Lakewood, Colorado. There, he used Unidata products extensively to assist in modeling of watershed systems.