Brian Blanton
Senior Research Scientist at Renaissance Computing Institute
Durham, North Carolina, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolBrian Blanton is a senior research scientist and coastal physical oceanographer with 12 years of hands-on experience applying high-performance numerical models to storm surge, tidal dynamics, and coastal inundation forecasting. Based at RENCI/UNC-Chapel Hill, he has led FEMA- and USACE-funded projects that produced coupled ADCIRC+SWAN model systems to compute statistical coastal flood hazards and assess sea level rise impacts up to one meter. He combines deep academic training (PhD in Coastal Oceanography) with practical HPC engineering, having managed large ensemble simulations on supercomputers for flood insurance and risk studies. Known for translating complex model output into actionable mapping and validation products, he bridges science, computation, and policy-facing deliverables. A less obvious strength is his repeated role as technical lead in multi-agency teams, where he standardizes simulation workflows and reproducible software for coastal risk assessment.
12 years of coding experience
1 year of employment as a software developer
BS, Mathematics, BS, Mathematics at Armstrong State CollegePhD, Coastal Oceanography, PhD, Coastal Oceanography at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
fortran, c, matlab, high-performance computing
Github Skills (60)
post-processing10
forecast10
ocean10
python9
automation9
ocean-modelling9
infrastructure9
matlab8
ugrid7
gsl6
noaa6
nco6
esgf6
visualization6
hydrology5
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
RENCI/ADRAS
Jun 2021 - Sep 2023
ADCIRCtoGeotiff base code
Contributions:2 releases, 5 PRs, 75 pushes in 2 years 2 months
base-code
RENCI/EDSReanalysis
Aug 2022 - Nov 2024
Demonstration functions for extracting timeseries from the RENCI/NOAA Reanalysis datasets
Contributions:4 releases, 5 PRs, 35 pushes in 2 years 3 months
noaadatasetstime-seriesreanalysistimeseries
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