Advisory Committees

CISL HPC Allocations Panel

CISL's advisory panel on high-performance computing and services is the CISL HPC Allocations Panel (CHAP). The CHAP's primary responsibility is to assess the merit of large computing requests for CISL supercomputers and related resources.

The panel accepts computing proposals from U.S. university researchers in the atmospheric and closely related sciences who are supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The CHAP recommends action with respect to a prospective user's request on the basis of the computational experimental design, computational effectiveness, and availability of computing resources.

CHAP members, most of whom are from the university community, are appointed to three-year terms by the CISL Director. Meetings are scheduled twice a year, usually in May and October. NSF's program coordinator for the NCAR and Facilities Section attends the semi-annual meetings and provides guidance from the NSF. 

NCAR CISL Advisory Panel

The CISL Advisory panel, made up of leading technologists and scientists from the international community, provides input on the strategy, activities, and plans for CISL's overall portfolio of computing and data services, software development, research efforts, education and outreach activities, and collaborations.  

Convened in April 2016 and meets approximately every 18 months.

Panel members

Sunita Chandrasekaran, Department of Computer and Information Sciences University of Delaware

Sunita Chandrasekaran is an Associate Professor with the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Delaware, USA. She is also a computational scientist with Brookhaven National Laboratory. She received her Ph.D. in 2012 on Tools and Algorithms for High-Level Algorithm Mapping to FPGAs from the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research spans High Performance Computing, exascale computing, parallel programming, benchmarking and data science. Applications of interest include scientific domains such as plasma physics, biophysics, solar physics and bioinformatics. She is a recipient of the 2016 IEEE-CS TCHPC Award for Excellence for Early Career Researchers in High Performance Computing. She has been involved with SC, ISC, IPDPS, IEEE Cluster, CCGrid, WACCPD, AsHES and P3MA in different capacities.

Sandra Gesing, US Research Software Engineer Association (US-RSE)

Sandra Gesing has a 50% position as the Executive Director of US-RSE and a 50% position as Senior Researcher at SDSC. Her research focuses on science gateways, computational workflows as well as distributed and parallel computing. Before her positions at US-RSE and SDSC, she was a senior research scientist, the Scientific Outreach and DEI Lead at the Discovery Partners Institute (DPI), University of Illinois System, Chicago. Prior to DPI, she was an associate research professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and a computational scientist in the Center for Research Computing at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, US. Before she moved to the US, she was a research associate in the Data-Intensive Research Group at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and in the Applied Bioinformatics Group at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Additionally, she has perennial experience as a project manager and system developer in industry in the US and Germany. As head of a system programmer group, she led long-term software projects. She received her German diploma (equivalent to a Master’s degree) in computer science from extramural studies at the FernUniversität Hagen and her PhD in computer science from the University of Tübingen, Germany.

Duanjun Lu, Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi

Duanjun Lu is an Associate Professor in Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi. He completed his BS in Weather Dynamics of Nanjing Institute of Meteorology, P.R. China, 1989. He hold Ph.D in Environmental Science of Jackson State University 2010. Currently, he serves as Vise-Chair of the Division of Atmospheric Science and Oceanography in Mississippi Academy of Sciences. The main focus of his research activities is on 1) numerical weather forecast modeling; 2) air quality modeling; 3) the GIS application; 4) storm surge modeling. He is a PI for managing a fund from The Department of Homeland Security as well as a CO-PI of a fund from NOAA/EPP.

Umberto Modigliani, ECMWF

Umberto Modigliani is the Deputy Director of Forecasts, collaborating closely with the Department Director, contributing to the management of the Forecast Department (~100 staff). The department is responsible for the 24/7 timely production of ECMWF's computer-based forecasts, forecast quality, software development, liaison with forecast users, user support, data sales and software licensing. The department also manages the acquisition, processing and quality control of observations, globally, of the atmosphere and oceans. The job includes many international engagements.  His work also includes comprehensive reporting on plans and progress to the formal committees and Council which constitute the ECMWF governance.

Pablo Minnini, University of Buenos Aires

I received my diploma in 1999 and my doctoral degree in 2003, both in physics and from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in Argentina. From 2004 to 2007 I was a postdoc and later a staff scientist at National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in Boulder, CO, USA. I continued working for NCAR as a part-time scientist from 2007 to 2012. Since 2007 I am professor at the Physics Department at UBA, where I was also the head of the department from 2011 to 2015. Since 2010 I am the chair of the National Supercomputing Initiative of the federal government in Argentina. From 2017 to 2020 I was Project Manager for all grants in physics, mathematics and astronomy of the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Research in Argentina. Now I am the director of a new joint institute between UBA and CONICET in Argentina, covering topics in applied and interdisciplinary physics. I received the Houssay prize (president medal in Argentina) in 2010, and the ICTP prize (UNESCO/Italy) in 2012. I work on the numerical and theoretical study of turbulent flows, with applications in astrophysics, geophysics, atmospheric sciences, and quantum fluids. In the field of fluid dynamics my expertise includes parallelization methods for computational fluid dynamics, application of statistical methods for the characterization and analysis of turbulent flows, spectral analysis of multi-scale and multi-physics phenomena, and sub-grid modeling for turbulent flows. Applications include the solar cycle and turbulent dynamos, magnetic reconnection, rotating and stratified turbulence, and superfluid turbulence. Recently, I also became interested in laboratory experiments of fluids applied to the study of geophysical flows.

Beth Plale, Indiana University Bloomington

Dr. Beth Plale, the Michael A and Laurie Burns Professor of Computer Engineering, is Department Chair  of the Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington (IU). Plale  serves as the Executive Director of the Pervasive Technology Institute and Director of the Data To Insight  Center. Plale’s research interests are in software, hardware, and governance infrastructure for AI, open  science, provenance & reproducibility, AI ethics, and data accountability. Plale served at the US National  Science Foundation (NSF) for open science (2017 -2020). Her postdoctoral studies were at the Georgia  Institute of Technology and PhD is in computer science from the Watson School of Engineering at the  State University of New York Binghamton.  

Plale is a founder of the Indiana University Center of Excellence for Women & Technology (CEWIT) and a  founding director of the Hathi Trust Research Center (HTRC). She is a founder of the international  Research Data Alliance (RDA) and currently leads RDA-US efforts. Plale received the Early Career award  from the Department of Energy (DOE) and is a senior member of ACM and IEEE.

Tim Whitcomb, NRL MRY

Timothy Whitcomb is a Meteorologist (since 2008) and head of the Global Modeling Section (since 2014) at the Naval Research Laboratory Marine Meteorology Division in Monterey, CA. He completed a BS in Atmospheric Science from the University of Washington in 2003 and an MS in Atmospheric Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008. He supervises a team of civil servants and contractors performing research and development for the Navy’s global atmospheric model and is currently a principal investigator for projects under the Navy’s Earth System Prediction Capability program for developing coupled models for extended-range prediction.

His interests include the use of on-site and cloud-based high-performance computing for large modeling systems and workflow orchestration for weather prediction.