NSF Unidata welcomes their summer interns!
Leo Matak joined the NSF Unidata Program Center as a student summer intern on May 20, 2024. He received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. Currently, he is pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Houston, where he is part of the Environmental Fluid Mechanics lab, focusing on atmospheric boundary layer dynamics.
"My experience at Unidata has been nothing short of amazing!" says Leo. "The people here are incredibly kind, open, and always willing to help or socialize." Leo's summer project focuses on expanding the capabilities of the the netCDF Java library. "This is particularly interesting to me," he says, "because during my Ph.D. work I have frequently used this data type but never knew who developed it or how it functioned 'under the hood.' Getting to know the developers behind it and contributing to the project has been an incredible experience."
Leo continues, "With the deeper understanding of the netCDF file format and the overall skills I am gaining in Java and software engineering, I have no doubt this experience will play a pivotal role in my future career. I truly appreciate what Unidata is doing for the community, and I hope to continue contributing to these efforts in the future."
Ana Castaneda Montoya joined the NSF Unidata Program Center as a student summer intern on May 20, 2024; she received her Bachelor's degree in Physics from the University of Texas at Dallas the same week. She will be starting her graduate studies at the University of Michigan in August, where she'll pursue a PhD in Climate Science.
"My first weeks at Unidata have been great! Everyone in the community has been welcoming and supportive," says Ana. During the first days of her internship, Ana has been working with Project Pythia Foundations, a learning resource for Python computing. "Project Pythia has been especially useful to me for understanding the git workflow, and I wish to make my own contributions. I am also very excited about participating in the Pythia Hackathon and getting involved with other cookbook projects. Contributing to the open source community is appealing to me because I would love to help others directly with my work," she adds.
This summer, Ana will be exploring a variety of projects and expanding her coding skills in ways that will support her future research. "This position has offered me a lot of flexibility, so I am sure the new skills I develop throughout the summer will be varied and have a lot of applications," she says. "I am excited to keep learning from my mentors and to explore Colorado with other interns!"
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Rachel Dammann
UCAR, UCP and NSF NCAR
Boulder CO
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