Sepi Yalda, Millersville University (chair)
Marty Baxter, Central Michigan University
Steven Lazarus, Florida Institute of Technology
Lynne McMurtry, University of Washington
Chuck Pavloski, Pennsylvania State University
Russ Schumacher, Colorado State University
Kevin Tyle, University at Albany, SUNY
__National Science Foundation, AGS Division:__
Nick Anderson (NSF Physical/Dynamic Meteorology)
Anjuli Bamzai (Section Head)
Ed Bensman and Helena Fountain (remote)
Bernard Grant (Unidata NSF program manager, host)
Chungu Lu (Physical/Dynamic Meteorology)
Sri Mishra (NSF/NCAR)
Paul Shepson (AGS Division Director)
__Also:__
David Legler (NOAA)
Chris Lynnes (NASA)
Jeff De La Beaujardiere (NOAA)
Ethan Davis
Doug Dirks
Terry Mitchell-Sur
Inken Purvis
Mohan Ramamurthy
Josh Young
NSF Participants included:
Ed Bensman and Helena Fountain (remote)
Anjuli Bamzai (Section Head)
Paul Shepson AGS Division Director
Chungu Lu (Physical/Dynamic Meteorology)
Bernard Grant
Sri Mishra (NSF/NCAR)
Nick Anderson (NSF Physical/Dynamic Meteorology)
Questions from NSF:
ACTION - Provide NSF the breakdown of sources of data
Even though annual budgets passed for NSF, GEO won’t know operating budget plan for 45 days. Congress has also given a charge to look more at human dynamics and impacts.
ACTION - Follow up with David Legler regarding possible partnerships.
Must continue to contribute unique value; respond to NSF priorities and directions; and stay ahead of what is being provided to the community. Unidata has to identify needs and produce capabilities that respond to those needs.
Current award will expire on March 30, 2019 with Bernard requesting a proposal 6 months ahead of the expiration so the deadline for this proposal is the end of September with mid-September being preferable. There will not be a solicitation or an RFP for providing these services to the community. Essentially, this will be treated as an unsolicited proposal. This may be the last time that the Unidata Program Center is able to submit an unsolicited proposal. The National Science Board has pushed NSF to make all major awards an open competition at least every 10 years.
We will need to have a near-complete draft by the end of July so that we can go through the layers of review.
Possibly frame proposal based on Frontiers (new, cutting edge, and innovative activities) and Imperatives (what must be maintained in terms of products and services) == perhaps Frontier, Evaluation, and Implementation
Possible Themes: Data proximate analysis, machine learning/deep learning (however, this does work for a 10 day collection of data; well positioned however there is some risk it would have to go to the data though maybe the cloud might make it easier to utilize). You need some unique dataset to analyze and provide insights. This makes the scalability issue all the more important; TDS is used more places; however, it must be able to handle much bigger data sets.
Bernard provided a tour of NSF’s new building, in particular, the GEO facilities.
Continuation of Proposal Conversation:
Guidance/suggestions to Universities about what kind of skill sets are needed for a university’s objectives. Potentially offering a Unidata certification, by using existing MOOC platforms such as Coursera could be a valuable offering. An AGU Tutorial on data science and software would also be a potential contribution in this space.
Anjuli Bamzai presented an overview of the HDR effort within NSF. The prime takeaway concerned the possibility of applying Unidata approaches to other disciplines within HDR.
Disconnects between HPC and cloud computing that is known to the community and that is very much under the effort of HDR. Unidata should consider HDR as a standing opportunity to look for new applications and partnerships.
(Presentation not available)
Josh provided a brief summary of the conversation during the Users Committee. SAC members agreed that climate might be conspicuously missing and that integration of WRF into IDV might provide leverage Committee members made the distinction that tools and data have different communities