Alper Altuntas

I’m a research software engineer at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), where I work on the ocean component of the Community Earth System Model (CESM), a flagship software project used worldwide to simulate the Earth system.

My work centers on designing advanced data structures, implementing math- and physics-based algorithms for scientific computing, and optimizing HPC applications with multithreading, multiprocessing, and GPUs. In addition to core model development, I lead the design of tools that streamline workflows. For example, I created visualCaseGen, a GUI that helps users configure custom CESM experiments, similar to how product configuration tools guide users.

I also have a strong interest in formal verification. My past work includes model checking with SPIN, correctness verification with Alloy, reasoning about sparse matrix computations, hybrid systems verification with KeYmaera X, and building an SMT-based solver for visualCaseGen. See the list of my publications for more details.

I focus on writing scalable, maintainable, robust, and efficient code by applying best practices, which I share through publications, talks, mentorship, and events I organize, such as the Workshop on Correctness and Reproducibility. In recognition of these efforts, I was recently awarded a 2025 Better Scientific Software Fellowship.