Micah Cochran
Informatics Analyst III
Birmingham, Alabama, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMicah Cochran is an Informatics Analyst III and GIS professional with a decade of experience applying cartography, municipal planning, and spatial data engineering in government and academic settings. Based in Birmingham, he pairs hands-on municipal GIS leadership—redrawing voting districts, migrating paper workflows to interactive web maps, and automating routine GIS requests—with software engineering skills honed through contributions to well-known open-source geospatial projects like Fiona, basemap, and pyproj. His work spans Python back-end development, test automation, and build tooling, demonstrating an ability to keep geospatial libraries compatible across platforms and PROJ versions. With an MS in Computer Science and a background coordinating multi-agency GIS initiatives, he brings both technical rigor and practical process improvements that reduce turnaround time and modernize civic workflows.
10 years of coding experience
Master of Science - MS, Computer Science, 4.0 GPA, Master of Science - MS, Computer Science, 4.0 GPA at University of Alabama at BirminghamB.A. (Bachelor of Arts), Geography, B.A. (Bachelor of Arts), Geography at University of North Alabama
Stackoverflow
11reputation
3kreached
2answers
0questions
Github Skills (23)
unit-testing10
coordinate-transformation10
python10
testing10
gdal10
geospatial10
gis10
maps10
ogr9
cicd9
numpy9
automation9
test-automation9
automations9
pytest8
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
pyproj4/pyproj
Oct 2015 - Nov 2020
Python interface to PROJ (cartographic projections and coordinate transformations library)
Role in this project:
QA Engineer / Test Automation Engineer
QA Engineer / Test Automation EngineerContributions:48 commits, 56 PRs, 22 pushes in 5 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Micah primarily contributed to the project by adding and modifying unit tests. These tests focused on verifying the correct behavior of the `pyproj` library, specifically addressing issues related to coordinate transformations and geographic calculations. The user's work included creating tests for edge cases, validating error handling, and ensuring the robustness of the library's functionality. The modifications included refactoring tests for maintainability and adapting them to different PROJ.4 versions.
geospatialpythonpython-interfacecoordinate-transformationsgeodesic
matplotlib/basemap
Nov 2015 - May 2016
Plot on map projections (with coastlines and political boundaries) using matplotlib
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Data Scientist
Back-end Developer & Data ScientistContributions:45 commits, 16 PRs, 112 comments in 5 months
Contributions summary:Micah primarily focused on maintaining and improving the `matplotlib/basemap` repository, specifically by making it compatible with different versions of external dependencies. Their contributions included updating import locations for `pyproj` and `pyshp` (shapefile) and modifying the setup and testing procedures. The user also refactored and added functions for version checking and diagnostics, ensuring correct dependencies and compatibility for different library versions. The work demonstrates an understanding of the project's dependencies and a focus on maintaining compatibility and usability.
boundariesgeopandaspythonplotcoastlines
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