Valpo Meteorology Professor Awarded Unidata Grant

June 8, 2021 – Valparaiso, Indiana – Kevin Goebbert, Ph.D., associate professor of meteorology at Valparaiso University, has received a grant from Unidata, in partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF), to continue developing meteorological technologies. Valpo’s share of the award, totaling more than $40,000, will fund a three-year project.

Working with two developers from Unidata, Goebbert aims to improve the speed and functionality of MetPy, a Python-based library for meteorological and atmospheric science.

“The goal of MetPy is to build a modern tool for education and research across the world to calculate, analyze and visualize weather data,” Goebbert said. “My role as an educator is to think about user experience and create educational materials to be used by Unidata developers.”

This is Goebbert’s second grant related to MetPy. As the technology continues to develop, he is already introducing the software to the next generation of meteorologists.

“Valparaiso University has been on the edge of incorporating these technologies into our meteorology curriculum,” Goebbert said. “First-year students in my weather technology class are beta testers for meteorological tools like MetPy.”

Unidata is a community of education and research institutions with the common goal of sharing geoscience data and the tools to access and visualize that data. For more than 30 years, Unidata has been providing data, software tools, and support to enhance Earth-system education and research and is funded primarily by NSF.