Benjamin Hillman
R&D Geoscience Engineering at Sandia National Laboratories
Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolBenjamin Hillman is an R&D geoscience engineer and climate scientist with nine years of experience developing and testing large-scale atmospheric and Earth system models at Sandia National Laboratories. He contributes to the Department of Energy’s E3SM climate model, focusing on test automation and QA for critical components like regional refinement and radiative transfer (RRTMGP) to ensure robust, production-ready configurations. With a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Washington and a background in satellite simulator–based cloud analysis, he bridges observationally grounded research and software engineering. Based in Albuquerque, he pairs deep domain expertise with practical tooling improvements in prominent open-source modeling infrastructure (ESMCI/cime), often addressing infrastructure limits such as memory and test execution parameters. Colleagues rely on him to translate complex scientific requirements into maintainable test suites that keep next-generation climate simulations reliable and reproducible.
10 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Atmospheric Sciences, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Atmospheric Sciences at University of WashingtonBachelor of Science (B.S.), Physics, Mathematics, Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Physics, Mathematics at Western Washington UniversityAssociate of Science - AS, Physics, Mathematics, Associate of Science - AS, Physics, Mathematics at Shoreline Community College
Github Skills (6)
regression-testing10
test-automation10
testing10
python9
climate-model9
fortran8
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
ESMCI/cime
Jul 2017 - Jul 2020
Common Infrastructure for Modeling the Earth
Role in this project:
QA Engineer / Test Automation Engineer
QA Engineer / Test Automation EngineerContributions:37 commits, 1 push, 11 comments in 3 years
Contributions summary:Benjamin primarily contributed to the development and maintenance of the test suite for the `cime` repository, focusing on testing the Earth system model's configurations, specifically related to RRM (Regional Refinement Model) and RRTMGP (Rapid Radiative Transfer Model for General circulation model applications) tests. Their work involved adding, modifying, and organizing tests within the `update_e3sm_tests.py` and `config/e3sm/tests.py` files. The user also addressed issues related to testing infrastructure, such as the need for increased memory and command-line arguments for test execution.
modelingearthinfrastructure
brhillman/dotfiles
Jun 2018 - Apr 2026
Contributions:6 pushes, 1 branch in 7 years 10 months
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