The Unidata Program brings together a diverse community of education and research institutions with the common goal of sharing geoscience data and the tools to access and visualize that data. Every three years, the Program’s Users Committee, which is composed of representatives from U.S. university geoscience departments, organizes a Unidata Users Workshop to give members of this community a forum to share hands-on activities, course materials, and ideas for improving research and education. The workshops are hosted by the Unidata Program Center (UPC) in Boulder, Colorado.

The 2015 Users Workshop, held 22-25 June at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research’s Center Green facility in Boulder, was titled “Data-Driven Geoscience: Applications, Opportunities, Trends, and Challenges.” This theme was chosen to encourage workshop participants to become more aware of emerging technologies and workflows loosely grouped under the topics of: Python, big data, cloud computing, and data management. Members of the Unidata community were invited by the workshop organizers (the Unidata Users Committee) to share their knowledge and experience with the workshop participants, providing a true community forum for discussion of ways to take advantage of new technologies to improve research and education. Workshop attendees participated in hands-on working sessions with a variety of new technologies, forming connections with each other and Unidata staff that have allowed them to bring the technologies and techniques introduced at the workshop to their own teaching and research.

The workshop demographics reflected Unidata’s broad community. Of the 73 registered attendees, 44 were from academic institutions ranging from small (e.g. St. Cloud State University, College of Du Page) to large (e.g. Purdue University, University of Oklahoma), and from as far away as London and Guadalajara. Research agencies and institutions (including UCAR) sent 24 attendees; a representative from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency is counted in this group. Commercial entities sent five participants, three of whom were workshop presenters. Graduate student participation was encouraged by providing travel grants and waiving the workshop registration fees – with the expectation that students would present a poster featuring material related to the workshop’s theme.

Unidata Program Center staff collected participants’ comments during and after the workshop. The following are a sample:

• Very interesting topic, and well done presentation. I have a better understanding of how cloud computing could be leveraged to support big geodata processing.

• Interesting theme and great presenter, I just got a lot of ideas of things I can share with researchers in my university!

• Great examples of some fantastic applications for Python related to weather and forecasting. I also liked that he showed how to add widgets such as sliders to the iPython notebook.

• Great content. Would have preferred (the presenter) spend more time explaining the exercise answers rather than the "discuss with neighbor" format.

Workshop participants were introduced to a variety of easy-to-use and interactive data analysis techniques, allowing them to use freely-available, community-supported software to accomplish tasks that might otherwise require purchasing commercial software products. The Python programming language and the interactive iPython/Jupyter “notebook” technologies generated quite a bit of interest, as these tools are not only free to use, they are simple to configure and incorporate in classroom activities. Sessions on using cloud-computing resources gave participants exposure to a topic that can be confusing when first approached, allowing them to learn about the capabilities and advantages of the cloud-computing paradigm in a collegial environment.

Workshop participants left with a variety of tools and ideas to try incorporating into their own research and teaching routines. Unidata views workshop like this as a way to foster a better educated and more technologically savvy faculty and student population, enabling a transformation in the conduct research and education in the atmospheric and related sciences.

Last Modified: 09/10/2017
Modified by: Mohan K Ramamurthy