Samuel Hatfield

Computational Scientist
Computing, HPC and Cloud Systems, HPC Applications

Summary:

Sam joined ECMWF in October 2019 shortly after completing his PhD with Tim Palmer and Peter Dueben at the University of Oxford. Sam's work spans numerical methods and high-performance computing within numerical weather prediction. He is chiefly responsible for managing the ecTrans library, which is a key component of ECMWF's Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) atmospheric model. Through his work on ecTrans, Sam is involved intimately with the effort to port the IFS to modern GPU-accelerated supercomputers such as the EuroHPC machines. He has also worked on optimisation of ECMWF's ocean forecasting component (fulfilled by the NEMO model), including the operational use of single-precision floating-point arithmetic.

Sam has been involved with many EU projects such as ESiWACE2, DEEP-SEA, EUPEX and HANAMI.

Professional interests:
  • High-performance spectral transforms in global atmospheric models
  • Floating-point arithmetic in high-performance numerical weather prediction
  • Portability of large Fortran codebases across a variety of heterogeneous supercomputing architectures
  • Open-source software in the geosciences
Career background:

DPhil in Environmental Research, University of Oxford (NERC Environmental Research Doctoral Training Partnership), 2015-2019

  • Thesis title: Reduced-precision arithmetic in numerical weather prediction with an emphasis on data assimilation
  • Supervisors: Prof. Tim Palmer, Dr. Peter Dueben

MSci in Physics, University of Bristol, 2010-2014

  • First-class honours
  • Final year project title: Knots in geometrically-confined polymers: nanochannels and other geometries
  • Final year project advisor: Dr. Simon Hanna