Carlos A. Cruz
Alexandria
Summary
Accomplished Computational Scientist at NASA/GSFC with a strong focus on high-performance computing and Earth system modeling. Developed innovative software solutions that significantly improved data visualization capabilities while mentoring junior staff. Demonstrated expertise in software development and team collaboration, successfully driving impactful projects in climate modeling and AI frameworks. Aiming to leverage technical skills and leadership experience to further advance scientific research and technology.
Overview
35
35
years of professional experience
Work History
SSAI Chief Scientific Programmer Analyst
NASA/GSFC
Greenbelt
05.2012 - Current
- Company Overview: Advanced Software and Technology Group, Greenbelt, MD
- Lead software engineer for the NASA Unified Weather Research and Forecasting (NU-WRF) modeling system.
- Architect and lead software engineer of eViz visualization project. The project involves the development of tools to help visualize Earth system model data streams.
- Team member in the TERRAHydro project. The goal of this project is to develop a reusable AI-first framework, the Coupled Reusable Earth Systems Tensor (CREST) framework, for building Earth System Models (ESMs) or Earth System Digital Twins (ESDTs) and to leverage CREST to build the TERRAHydro land surface model (LSM).
- A lead member in the modelE re-engineering effort. The work consisted of refactoring and testing the NASA-GISS modelE climate model to reduce the long-term cost of maintaining and extending model code.
- Over the years I have supervised and trained various junior members within the organization to perform sub-tasks within the aforementioned modeling efforts.
- Developed a Python based regression testing framework, reg, used in GISS modelE and NUWRF.
- Helps to organize and train scientists and engineers in NASA's Training Bootcamps.
- Advanced Software and Technology Group, Greenbelt, MD
NGIT Physicist IV
NASA/GSFC
Greenbelt
01.2007 - 04.2012
- Company Overview: Advanced Software and Technology Group, Greenbelt, MD
- Team member in the development of a giga-particle trajectory model. This model was developed ab initio in C++ using test-driven development techniques. The model was parallelized using MPI and was capable of performing stratospheric trajectory simulations with billions of parcels.
- Team member in the Moving Objects Database (MOD) project. The application used various techniques to automate the identification of meteorological events by ingesting the required data (satellite, reanalysis, etc) into a database for cataloging. I developed various JAVA classes used to ingest data sources and was responsible for executing and diagnosing the production runs.
- Collaborated in the Elastic Parallel IO (EPIO) project where I provided advice and direct support to the EPIO staff in their efforts to port their software to NASA computer systems. The EPIO project aims to use an optimized IO library called ADIOS that will significantly improve the IO performance of GEOS5 and potentially modelE.
- Developed the online GEOS-5 GCM user's guide on NASA's modeling guru website. I was also the primary moderator (and frequent contributor) of various communities on the NASA modeling guru website.
- Helped in the development and creation of the scripts and workflow configurations that run a climate model (GEOS-5) under a JAVA-based workflow tool. Scripts perform setup, execution, and archival of GEOS-5 experiments.
- Helped to develop a MAPL component analyzer tool written in Perl (MAPL is a software layer and set of conventions to standardize the use of the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF)).
- Have assisted in various efforts to make GEOS-5 model components to be ESMF and/or MAPL compliant.
- Advanced Software and Technology Group, Greenbelt, MD
NGIT Senior member of technical staff
NASA/GSFC
Greenbelt
05.2002 - 12.2006
- Company Overview: Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, Greenbelt, MD
- Participated in developing Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) applications to be used in the GEOS-5. GEOS-5 integrates the GEOS-5 AGCM with the Grid-point Statistical Interpolation (GSI) atmospheric analysis developed jointly with NOAA/NCEP/EMC. The GEOS-5 systems are being developed in the GMAO to support NASA's earth science research in data analysis, observing system modeling and design, climate and weather prediction, and basic research.
- Responsible for computational requirement identification, planning, data structure and algorithm design, and software implementation for Part III of the ESMF (Data Assimilation) project suite working under the guidance of the principal investigator. Acquired practical experience with satellite radiances, satellite-based climate data records and data assimilation. Programming activity includes design and development of new parallel software, and modification and adaptation of existing software packages and libraries in multi-language environments.
- Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, Greenbelt, MD
NGIT Senior member of technical staff
NASA/GSFC
Greenbelt
01.2002 - 04.2002
- Company Overview: Science Data Systems Branch, Greenbelt, MD
- Lead a study to develop a disease forecasting tool: Tool consisted of a disease forecasting system that helped identify the spread of a vector-borne disease as a function of weather.
- Developed task goals, performed literature review, identified statistical tools, data sets and began tool development.
- Science Data Systems Branch, Greenbelt, MD
NGIT Senior member of technical staff
NASA/GSFC
Greenbelt
04.2000 - 12.2001
- Company Overview: NASA Center for Computational Sciences, Greenbelt, MD
- Helped to develop a coupler component used to provide an interface between two systems, a weather model and a data assimilation system, defined on different computational grids. Main responsibilities included design, development, and testing of scientific code on a cray SV1 and O2K computer systems. Programming was performed in Fortran 90.
- Additional responsibilities included writing unix scripts and utilizing several software packages to aid in the software engineering process.
- NASA Center for Computational Sciences, Greenbelt, MD
SAIC Programmer
US Bureau of the Census
Suitland
08.1998 - 03.2000
- Extensive involvement in the creation of new software that interfaces with the TIGER database system for aiding in the census 2000 map production. My main contribution was the creation of a software module that implemented a genetic algorithm to solve a map coloring problem used in the creation of census maps.
- Programming was performed in C running under a Perl script in a UNIX environment.
- Responsible for modifying existing code, writing and implementing change requests, and other facets of the software design process.
Systems Engineer
CACI Federal, Inc
Arlington
03.1996 - 01.1997
- Developed and tested code for various modules of the Configuration Management Information System (CMIS) software.
- Designed Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the CMIS project using OBJECTVIEW. Developed stored procedures and triggers in ORACLE7 to maintain database integrity. Maintained the data transfer utility programs for the CMIS project.
Research assistant
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
Washington
10.1990 - 10.1995
- Company Overview: Bioengineering Section, Washington D.C.
- Aided in developing experimental test models for the Film-less Dental Imaging (FDI) Project.
- Performed the statistical data analysis and wrote computer code to aid in the project when needed.
- Experiments involved the use of oscilloscopes, multimeters, and Geiger counters.
- Performed all kinds of mechanical duties involving machine shop instrumentation. Assisted in inventories, stocks, general laboratory management, and various administrative duties.
- Analyzed polymers with a 300 MHz NMR for the Micro-encapsulation Project.
- Bioengineering Section, Washington D.C.
Education
Ph.D. - Climate Dynamics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA12-2010
Master of Science - Physics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA05-1996
Bachelor of Science - Physics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA05-1988
Skills
- High-performance computing
- Python, Fortran, C/C
- Earth system modeling
- Machine learning
- Software development
- Data visualization
- Mentoring junior staff
- Technical documentation
- Team collaboration
Affiliations
- Computational Sciences and Informatics Fellowship: 1997-98 academic year.
- TASC Special Achievement Award: February, 2001.
- Robert H. Goddard Exceptional Achievement Team Award for Science: August 2010 (part of team)
- Northrop Grumman TAP award: December, 2011
- Frequent science fair judge at Alexandria and Fairfax public schools.
- Tutor, Alexandria city public schools, 2016-2017 Academic year.
- Tutor, Fairfax county adult education, Spring 2014.
Timeline
SSAI Chief Scientific Programmer Analyst
NASA/GSFC
05.2012 - Current
NGIT Physicist IV
NASA/GSFC
01.2007 - 04.2012
NGIT Senior member of technical staff
NASA/GSFC
05.2002 - 12.2006
NGIT Senior member of technical staff
NASA/GSFC
01.2002 - 04.2002
NGIT Senior member of technical staff
NASA/GSFC
04.2000 - 12.2001
SAIC Programmer
US Bureau of the Census
08.1998 - 03.2000
Systems Engineer
CACI Federal, Inc
03.1996 - 01.1997
Research assistant
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
10.1990 - 10.1995
Ph.D. - Climate Dynamics
George Mason University
Master of Science - Physics
George Mason University
Bachelor of Science - Physics
George Mason University
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