John enjoying Hawai'i weather after so long in the cold.

John Maurer began working with PacIOOS over six years  ago, when it was actually called "HiOOS." While his official job title is "Data System Engineer," he prefers "Mapster and Data Geek." Prior to his PacIOOS days, John obtained a graduate certificate in remote sensing and a Master's degree in geography from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he developed software to analyze ground-penetrating radar for snow accumulation patterns on the Greenland ice sheet. While in Boulder, he cut his teeth with the National Snow and Ice Data Center for eight years, sparking his initial interest in Earth science and all things geospatial: an unexpected detour from his undergraduate degree in "Music, Science, and Technology" at Stanford University.

After so much time in the cold, John decided to trade snow boots for "slippahs," and maps of melting ice for those of its consequence (sea level rise). When not troubleshooting bugs or configuring new data in PacIOOS servers, a typical day for John involves designing and coding end-to-end systems for data processing, visualization, and/or distribution. One of the things he likes best about his job is the wide variety of data and places with which PacIOOS works. "Datasets are as variable as snowflakes, or grains of sand: no two are ever the same," John says. As evident in PacIOOS Voyager and other recent project pages, John strives to make complex, and often diverse, scientific information easier to access, use, and understand. Thanks for all of your hard work, John!