Carlie J. Coats, Jr.

Senior Software Engineer
Center for Environmental Modeling for Policy Development

Biography

Carlie J. Coats, Jr., has 37 years experience in environmental modeling and high performance computing. During that time he acted as software architect for the EPA Models-3 project. He is author/maintainer of the Models-3 I/O API, originator of the original SMOKE emissions model, author of the MAQSIP-RT numerical air quality prediction model used for the world’s first numerical air pollution forecasts, the AHRMS/REFLEX hydrological model, extensive optimizations of the MM5 and WRF meteorological models, studies of sub-grid scale terrain effects in air quality models and much additional environmental modeling software. He has been principal investigator on three EPA grants: Emissions Modeling Research with High Performance Computing (1993); Practical Parallel Computing Strategies, with Application to Air Quality and Cross Media Models (1996), Urban Watershed Decision Support Tools (2000) and one U.S. Air Force Weather Agency Contract:, MM5 and WRF Optimization for AFWA Operational Platforms (2003-2004). From 2003 through January 2014, he served as senior systems architect for Baron Advanced Meteorological Systems, LLC., where he was responsible for modeling systems and tool development for meteorology, air quality forecasting and hydrological/land-surface forecasting. He has made presentations and published articles on software engineering, parallel computing and optimization for environmental modeling, emissions modeling, air quality forecasting, sub-grid scale terrain effects, chemical data assimilation and other topics. He is currently a senior software engineer at UNC Institute for the Environment’s Center for Environmental Modeling for Policy Development.

Education

Ph.D., Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1978

B.S. with Distinction, Mathematics, Magna Cum Laude, Duke University, Durham, NC, 1973