Benjamin Kirk
Consulting Services Group Head at NCAR - The National Center for Atmospheric Research
Arvada, Colorado, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBenjamin Kirk is a seasoned HPC and scientific computing leader with 13+ years driving mission-critical programs for NASA and now heading the Consulting Services Group at NCAR. He blends deep technical expertise—architecting Lustre-based filesystems, designing multi-generation Linux HPC clusters, and building HPC software environments—with program leadership supporting aerodynamics, aerothermodynamics, and CFD for human spaceflight. At NASA he ran a combined government/contractor team, stewarded technical disciplines for Orion and Commercial Crew milestones, and managed multi-million-dollar budgets and certification efforts. He also contributes to open-source scientific tooling, notably integrating TecIO support into the widely used SU2 multiphysics simulation suite and helping maintain libMesh infrastructure. Known for pragmatic systems engineering, he optimizes workflows that avoid unnecessary data movement by co-locating development and HPC storage, a detail that has materially improved productivity for large-scale PDE and Monte Carlo workloads. He holds a PhD in Aerospace/Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering with applied mathematics training, combining rigorous research background with operational delivery.
13 years of coding experience
18 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Aerospace Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering; Applied Mathematics, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Aerospace Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering; Applied Mathematics at The University of Texas at Austin
Github Skills (14)
fluid-dynamics10
cfengine10
c-language10
cfc10
cprogramming-language10
cfml10
linear-algebra9
numerical-methods9
autoconf9
open-source9
parallel8
finite-element-analysis8
simulations8
simulation8
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
libMesh/libmesh
Nov 2012 - Aug 2018
libMesh github repository
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:834 commits, 15 PRs, 77 pushes in 5 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Benjamin's commits primarily involve merging branches and updating existing code files related to the libMesh project. The commits indicate participation in integrating updates, potentially bug fixes, and general code maintenance. The focus is on integrating changes into existing code rather than implementing new features.
golangfinite-element-analysisfemparallelfinite-element-methods
su2code/SU2
Jan 2014 - Nov 2014
SU2: An Open-Source Suite for Multiphysics Simulation and Design
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:31 commits in 10 months
Contributions summary:Benjamin primarily contributed to the integration of the TecIO library, developing and integrating sources for TecIO, which is a library for Tecplot data output. This involved adding example code and implementing the necessary infrastructure for building the TecIO library, including autoconf scripts and platform-specific configurations. The user also implemented changes to support building TecIO from source, demonstrating a focus on data output and file format handling within the SU2 framework.
physicsmultiphysics-simulationpythoncfdsnl-applications
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