Patrick Alken
Co-Founder at University of Colorado at Boulder
Denver, Colorado, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolPatrick Alken is a research physicist and co-founder with 18 years of experience applying theoretical, computational, and experimental methods to space physics and geomagnetism. He leads Flatirons Geomagnetic Services while continuing research at the University of Colorado, where he has developed pioneering 3D ionospheric current and electrodynamic models and invented techniques to derive electric fields from satellite magnetometer data. A longtime developer of high-performance scientific software— including leadership on the GNU Scientific Library—he combines deep domain expertise in plasma physics and spherical harmonic methods with 15+ years of computational engineering. His work has been adopted by international teams and space missions (notably ESA’s Swarm processing), reflecting a rare blend of academic rigor, operational software delivery, and entrepreneurial impact.
18 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
B.S., Physics, summa cum laude, B.S., Physics, summa cum laude at Drexel UniversityPh.D./M.S., Physics, Ph.D./M.S., Physics at University of Colorado at Boulder
English, French
Github Skills (12)
geophysics6
to-do5
pyautogui5
geospatial5
earth-science5
image-recognition4
geoscience4
searching4
python4
c-library3
mapping-tools3
automation2
Programming languages (2)
Github contributions (5)
pa345/lib
Oct 2015 - Dec 2020
Contributions:341 commits, 202 pushes, 6 branches in 5 years 3 months
BrianGladman/gsl
Apr 2008 - Jul 2016
Contributions:562 commits in 8 years 4 months
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