Greetings everyone,
I am happy to announce that the NSF Unidata Program Center has had our five-year proposal approved! This award from NSF will help ensure that the UPC can continue to provide data, tools and services to our users and other members of our community. This is undoubtedly good news of course; we are delighted that NSF continues to believe in and support the Unidata mission. More information on this funding approval can be found here:
https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/blogs/news/entry/nsf-unidata-funding-proposal-approvedWhile this new award is roughly a 5% increase over our previous award five years ago, as mentioned in that above post it was somewhat less than we requested in our proposal. As a result of this unfortunate situation, the Data Engineer position is one of three that is to be eliminated and I will no longer serve here at Unidata after this Friday (7/19/2024).
I joined the Unidata team as our Data Engineer nearly two years ago, the first time this position existed in our organization. In that time, I have been proud to serve alongside the rest of our staff to help support you, our users. Much of this role was designed to be a liaison between UPC staff & leadership, data providers, our governing committees and everyone else in our community, and I am privileged to have gotten to know so many amazing people. I can safely say that it’s the people, especially our users, that drive all of us here at the UPC to do what we do. It has been an honor.
Many of you already knew me as a community contributor from before I came to Unidata. The way I look at it, and as we used to say back in my retail days, I’m being promoted back to user/customer. I love being at this intersection of meteorology & computer science and this community has become my home. You will continue to see my name around these lists and other places, and I look forward to our future discussions & collaborations. I may not know what the next leg of my journey looks like quite yet, but I am excited for it.
Unidata will continue to function as it has, and will continue to offer the same level of support we have always been known for. If you ever have any questions, comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out! A list of our support inboxes can be found here:
https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/support/#request Or you can use our Support Request Form here:
https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/support/requestSupport.jsp And
address@hidden is always open too. As noted in the Funding Approval post I linked at the top, how the Unidata Program Center evolves from here is still unknown, but I remain hopeful that the long-term forecast for our little organization will include plenty of clear skies and calm waters.
"There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather." John Ruskin
Best!
-Mike
Mike Zuranski
Data Engineer II
NSF Unidata Program Center
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research