An external view of the Met Office building at night.

David Matthews

David leads a team of software engineers who develop and support the modelling infrastructure.

Areas of expertise

  • Configuration management.
  • Linux desktop.
  • Software development.

My Publications - Matthews, D

Current activities

David's team look after a number of systems which are essential to our modelling activities. These include:

  • The FCM software system which provides configuration management (version control, build system, etc) for most of our key modelling systems.
  • The Suite Control System which is used to organise the complex suite of programs and tasks which make up our forecasting system.
  • A generic user interface framework which is used to configure and submit jobs to be run on our computer systems.

Career background

David has worked on scientific software since joining the Met Office in 1995. He became manager of the Modelling Infrastructure Support Systems team in 2002.

Major activities which David has had significant contributions to have included:

  • Procurement of the tape based storage system which is used to archive the large amounts of research and operational data produced by the Met Office. This system became operational in 2009.
  • Development of the FCM software system (in widespread use since 2005).
  • Transition of the desktop systems when the Met Office relocated from Bracknell to Exeter in 2003.
  • Development of the Linux desktop which has used by research staff since we arrived at Exeter.
  • Development of the area based verification system used to evaluate both research and operational forecasts since 1999.

Prior to joining the Met Office, David worked in the Radar Research Laboratory at the GEC-Marconi Research Centre in Chelmsford. Before this, David completed a BSc in Mathematics at Southampton University.