Fostering Early Career Excellence - Insights from the NCAS Early Career Symposium

Posted on May 14, 2024  (Last modified on May 28, 2024) • 4 min read • 782 words

The National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) recently hosted the first-ever symposium for the early career atmospheric science community - Harmony in the Skies: Bridging Horizons in Atmospheric Science. Two CEDA graduates, Jesse Alexander and Nicola Farmer, helped organise the event, which was designed to bring staff early in their atmospheric science careers together.

The symposium, which took place at NCAS HQ Fairbairn House in Leeds, was highly successful, with a series of workshops, lightning talks, and discussions. It provided a forum for sharing ideas and insights designed to ensure that the science we do is sustainable and inclusive. Emily Anderson, Graduate Data Scientist said: “The symposium was a great way to meet and network with others at NCAS who are also early in their career. The event was fun and engaging, and it was interesting to hear about the research and work that others in the community are involved in.”

All about CEDA and JASMIN  

“Getting to know NCAS” was a key section of the forum, highlighting different projects that go on at NCAS and helping people get a broader picture of the research and people supporting the research. Jesse Alexander, Scientific Programming and Outreach Graduate, gave an introductory talk about CEDA  , explaining the complexities of being the data centre for both atmospheric and earth observation data. The talk spotlighted our key services; JASMIN and the CEDA Archive, whilst promoting the huge range of things we do and the support we can offer to NERC researchers.

Sharing experience in software engineering Nicola Farmer, Graduate Software Engineer, also helped facilitate and deliver computing workshops during the event. The first aimed to build a software and computing community connecting different strands of the atmospheric science community. The other provided a space for discussing important practices and exploring important technologies or resources available to the computing community. Nicola also talked about the benefits of containerisation using Docker, highlighting that containers are lightweight and portable, meaning they can be quickly set up and shut down on any system.

Nicola demonstrated how to use containers during the workshop, showcasing that they are isolated from the system meaning they can run without having to install software or worry about compatibility issues. You can click here to access the entire presentation from this software and data best practices workshop  . Ellie Fisher, Graduate Data Scientist said “It was nice to have a spotlight on the software alongside the science as this is very relevant to my work at CEDA!”

Automated data cataloguing  

A CEDA industrial placement student, Rory Jenns, discussed how he enabled automation and improvements to the CEDA arrivals service  , highlighting the complexities of data management along the way. You can view his presentation slides here  .

About the event, Rory said: “It was invigorating to hear how passionate the researchers across NCAS are about climate change, its impacts and how we can reduce them. From tracking methane leaks to modelling aerosols in the atmosphere to analysing weather patterns in the Indian Ocean, the breadth and depth of research is incredible. I loved getting a sense of the work we support at CEDA.”

During Rory’s talk, he walked us through the process of ingesting datasets into the Archive and how, through his work, data can now be uploaded, ingested, and catalogued automatically. Getting new data to the CEDA Catalogue  quickly and reliably.

Cloud-optimised data formats  

Graduate Software Engineer, Dan Westwood, gave an engaging talk about the cloud-optimised data formats Kerchunk and Zarr and how they can be used to optimise data storage and access. You can click here to access his presentation slides  . He explains the difficulties with storing pure NetCDF files on JASMIN and how it can be restrictive for data analysis across different sites and applications. To find out more about this click here to check out Dan’s Pipeline to Aggregate Data for Optimised Cloud Capabilities (Padocc). 

Dan and Rory then took part in an open panel discussion where they answered questions posed by the attendees. It was evident how keen people were to learn about best practices for data storage and representation, as well as top tips for uploading data into our arrivals service.

Supporting early careers is a strategic priority at CEDA. We currently have six Graduates, two Apprentices, and two Industrial Placement students with more on the way. It’s therefore no surprise that we had a great turnout at the symposium, with 8 delegates from CEDA we made up more than a fifth of the event attendees!

There are plans to make this an annual event, with the next symposium pencilled in for January 2025.