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), used by researchers worldwide to simulate the Earth system.

My work sits at the boundary between science and software: turning physics and math into code that runs well on supercomputers, building tools like visualCaseGen, a Z3-powered configurator that makes CESM easier to use, and modernizing legacy Fortran for today’s GPU-based systems.

I care a lot about getting scientific software right, and about being able to show that it is. That has taken me into formal methods: model checking, hybrid-systems proofs, and most recently Lean 4 proofs that modernized C++ kernels compute the same mathematics as the Fortran they replace. I also organize the Workshop on Correctness and Reproducibility for Earth System Software and was a 2025 Better Scientific Software Fellow.

Outside the code, I teach at CESM tutorials, mentor interns and early-career engineers, and represent NCAR in the broader ocean and wave modeling communities. If any of this overlaps with your work, I’d be glad to hear from you.