Sean Arms

Sean Arms is a Software Engineer at the NSF funded Unidata Program Center, one of the UCAR Community Programs (UCP). Born and raised in the rural karstlands of southern Indiana, Sean’s interest in meteorology began before he was even in kindergarten. However, it was in the 8th grade that he learned that there was this thing called “college” where he could learn all about the science behind the weather. After graduating high school in the year 2000, he packed up and headed west to the University of Oklahoma, where he earned his BS (2004), MS (2006), and, eventually, PhD (2014).

His studies at OU were focused on observational boundary layer meteorology (the “lesserwhirls”, if you will), and often involved deploying various types of instrumentation. During his time at OU, he was a TA for the junior level Meteorological Measurements course for multiple semesters, and taught the full course in his final fall semester on campus. With his incredible advisor (Dr. Petra Klein) and one of his committee members (Dr. Alan Shapiro) leading the way, he prioritized getting undergraduate students “into the field” as part of the regular undergraduate curriculum. He served as the first student representative to the Unidata Users committee (2007–2010), and, together with Dr. Brian Etherton, co-chaired the 2009 Unidata Users Workshop titled “Using Operational and Experimental Observations in Geoscience Education.” He also served as a student and regular member of the AMS Scientific and Technological Activities Commission’s Committee on Measurements (2010–2019).

Having fallen in love with the intersection of data, computer programming, and serving others, Sean took a position at the Unidata Program Center in 2011 (where he remotely finished his dissertation in 2014–not recommended!). After a three year break in the private sector, Sean returned to the Unidata Program Center in November of 2024. Currently, Sean leads the Thematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Services (THREDDS) project at Unidata, which includes the netCDF-Java library and the THREDDS Data Server, and participates in the development of the python library Siphon and various other Unidata projects. When this code monkey is let out of his cage, he loves interacting with the community!