Alper Altuntas
Software Engineer IV at NSF NCAR - The National Center for Atmospheric Research
Boulder, Colorado, United States
Summary
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Senior🎓
Top SchoolAlper Altuntas is a Software Engineer IV at NSF NCAR in Boulder with 11 years of experience building high-performance scientific software and HPC back-end systems. He holds an MS and PhD in Civil Engineering with a computing/systems focus from NC State and brings deep domain knowledge in earth system modeling and numerical coupling. At NCAR he progressed through engineering ranks working on core infrastructure for climate and ocean models, contributing to projects such as the widely used MOM6 and the CIME modeling framework. His work emphasizes robust initialization, time/calendar handling, coupling indices, diagnostics, and fixing memory and mesh-consistency issues—skills that reduce hard-to-detect runtime failures in long simulations. Known for pragmatic problem solving, he blends research rigor with production-grade engineering to keep complex coupled models reliable at scale. Based in Boulder, he quietly bridges academic insight and operational HPC engineering for the Earth system science community.
11 years of coding experience
14 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Civil Engineering / Computing & Systems, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Civil Engineering / Computing & Systems at North Carolina State UniversityBachelor of Science (BS) Civil Engineering, Bachelor of Science (BS) Civil Engineering at Istanbul Technical University
English, Turkish
Github Skills (13)
fortran10
ocean10
cim10
numerical10
ocean-modelling10
numerical-methods10
numeric10
scientific-computing10
modeling10
climate-model9
test-automation8
xml5
git4
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
mom-ocean/MOM6
Jun 2017 - Jun 2022
Modular Ocean Model
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:39 reviews, 349 commits, 7 PRs in 5 years
Contributions summary:Alper primarily focused on developing core components for the MOM6 ocean model, particularly within the MCT coupler framework. Their contributions included the initial setup and initialization of various modules, such as the coupler indices and the handling of time and calendar settings. The user also worked on setting up and initializing diagnostic routines related to the wave coupling, highlighting a deep understanding of the model's internal structure and its integration with external components.
numerical-modelingocean-circulationoceanfortranocean-model
ESMCI/cime
Mar 2018 - Nov 2022
Common Infrastructure for Modeling the Earth
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:2 reviews, 188 commits, 31 PRs in 4 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Alper primarily focused on modifying and maintaining the CIME (Common Infrastructure for Modeling the Earth) code base. Their contributions include merging branches, updating the code to the latest CIME version, and fixing memory leaks and other minor code adjustments. The user also added new features such as adding JRA RYF8485 forcing to datm, along with mesh consistency checks and fixing other specific code issues. Additionally, the user worked on test infrastructure, like adding the system_tests_compare_n module.
modelingearthinfrastructure
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