Bill Sacks
Software Engineer at NCAR - The National Center for Atmospheric Research
Boulder, Colorado, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBill Sacks is a software engineer based in Boulder, Colorado, with 20 years of experience marrying earth system science and computer science to advance large-scale climate and land models. At NCAR he builds and modernizes infrastructure for the Community Earth System Model and the Community Terrestrial Systems Model, introducing unit testing, object-oriented refactors, and new coupling mechanisms that enable alternative science parameterizations. He brings deep hands-on expertise with NetCDF and scientific workflows—contributing bug fixes and tests to SciPy and improving comparison tools and build processes across ESMF/CIME/CTSM repositories. Bill’s work spans backend development, technical writing, and QA, and he is known for translating complex scientific requirements into robust, maintainable code. Outside of code, he combines research training (PhD in Environment & Resources) with software engineering best practices to make scientific software both reproducible and extensible. An underappreciated strength is his ability to simplify multi-component coupling and testing so that domain scientists can more easily prototype new science.
20 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
PhD, Environment & Resources, PhD, Environment & Resources at University of Wisconsin-MadisonBA, Computer Science, Environmental Studies, BA, Computer Science, Environmental Studies at Williams College
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
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Github Skills (17)
scipy10
python10
testing10
command-line-arguments10
fortran10
numpy10
read-me10
argument-parsing10
build-automation10
netcdf10
scientific-computing10
documentation10
data-analysis7
algorithms5
ncr4
Programming languages (18)
Github contributions (5)
ESCOMP/CESM
Apr 2017 - Jan 2023
The Community Earth System Model
Role in this project:
Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:14 reviews, 201 commits, 50 PRs in 5 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Bill's contributions primarily involve modifying and expanding the README.rst file within the repository. Their work includes adding a title, providing more information about the Community Earth System Model, and clarifying instructions for obtaining, running, and customizing the model. They also focused on adding sections related to requirements, checkout_externals, and the structure of the documentation, further indicating a focus on documentation and user guidance. Moreover, their revisions include cleaning up formatting, fixing web links, and incorporating changes from a separate README.md file.
climateclimate-modelearthncarearth-system-model
ESMCI/cime
Dec 2015 - Dec 2022
Common Infrastructure for Modeling the Earth
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:146 reviews, 401 commits, 285 PRs in 7 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Bill primarily contributed to the refactoring and enhancement of the `cprnc` tool, which appears to be a comparison utility for netCDF files within the Common Infrastructure for Modeling the Earth (CIME) repository. Their work focused on refining the logic for comparing and reporting differences in file contents, specifically addressing scenarios involving missing fields and field lists. These changes improve the tool's functionality and are intended to facilitate the addition of new features.
modelingearthinfrastructure
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