Lewis Sampson
Lewis is a foundation scientific software engineer, employed as a member of the Excalibur pool, working under the Next Generation Modelling Systems (NGMS) programme.
Areas of expertise
- Ocean Modelling
- Variational Data Assimilation
- High-performance computing
Current activities
Lewis is currently working for the ocean forecasting research and development team (OFRD), while still being employed by the Excalibur pool under the next generation modelling systems program (NGMS). His work focuses on the analysis of the WaveWatch III model, using the options surrounding parallel processing such as OpenMP, OpenACC, MPI, and hybrid implementations. The aim is to use varying applications of the WaveWatch III model to assess its scalability and performance under each processing option.
Career background
Lewis started higher education at the University of Plymouth completing a B.Sc. in Mathematics before moving on to accept a PhD position in “Ocean modelling with novel data assimilation techniques” under Professor Georgy Shapiro. This postgraduate education is where Lewis learnt the skills surrounding software engineering and some of the tools required for dynamic modelling of earth systems.
After entering the fourth year of his PhD, Lewis successfully applied for a position as a foundation scientific software engineer at the Met Office starting during lockdown in May 2020. Initially spending the majority of his time becoming familiar with the Met Offices systems and the framework for the WaveWatch III model, he eventually moved on to the development of a small application of the wave model for initial tests.