Peter Dueben

Head of Earth System Modelling
Research, Earth System Modelling, Coupled Processes

Professional interests:
  • High-resolution weather and climate simulations.
  • High-performance computing for weather and climate models.
  • Machine learning for weather and climate predictions.
  • Model error, model uncertainty and predictability of chaotic systems.
  • New hardware for computational fluid dynamics such as field programmable gate arrays, machine learning accelerators, and stochastic processors.
  • Reduced numerical precision and hardware faults. 

 

Career background:

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EDUCATION AND WORK EXPERIENCE

  • 2022 - today: Head of the Earth System Modelling Section at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)
  • 2019 - 2022: Coordinator of Machine Learning and AI activities at ECMWF.
  • 2017 - 2022: Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Research Department of ECMWF.
  • 2016 - 2017: Scientist working in the Research Department of ECMWF on the ESiWACE project, Reading, UK.
  • 2012 - 2016: Postdoctoral Research Assistant working with Tim Palmer at the sub-department for Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, University of Oxford, UK. Postdoctoral MCR Member of Jesus College.
  • 2009 - 2012: PhD supervised by Peter Korn and Jochem Marotzke at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany. Thesis: “Finite element methods, grid refinement, and boundary currents in geophysical modeling”. Member of the International Max Planck Research School on Earth System Modelling.
  • 2004 - 2009: Diploma in Physics supervised by Dirk Homeier and Gernot Münster at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany.

 

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

  • 2021: Lecturer at a Machine Learning Crash-Course for CESOC.
  • ​2017 - today: Lecturer at training courses at ECMWF.
  • 2020: Lecturer at the Summer School on "Effective HPC for Climate and Weather", Reading, UK.​
  • 2016: Lecturer at the ISSAOS 2016 summer school on "Advanced Programming Techniques for the Earth System Science" hosted by the Gran Sasso Science Institute in L’Aquila, Italy.
  • 2016: Organiser and Lecturer at the "Chaos and Uncertainty in Weather Forecasts" advanced course for PhD students of the Environmental Research Doctoral Training Partnership at the University of Oxford.
  • 2013 - 2016: Tutor for the "Fluid Flows, Fluctuations and Complexity" course for undergraduate students in Physics at New College and Somerville College, University of Oxford.
  • 2011 - 2015: Lecturer at the "Introduction to Earth System Science and Modelling" course for PhD students at the International Max Planck Research School on Earth System Modelling.
  • 2007 - 2009: Tutor for undergraduate students in Physics at the University of Münster, Germany.

 

STUDENT SUPERVISION​

  • 2017 - 2022: PhD supervisor (together with Tim Palmer) of the PhD project of Milan Klöwer at the University of Oxford.
  • 2018 - 2021: PhD supervisor (together with Pavel Berloff) of the PhD project of Niraj Agarwal at Imperial College London.
  • 2017 - 2018: Supervisor of Master Projects at the University of Bristol and Imperial College London.
  • 2015 - 2019: PhD supervisor (together with Tim Palmer) of the PhD project of Samuel Hatfield at the University of Oxford.
  • 2014 - 2018: PhD supervisor (together with Tim Palmer) of the PhD project of Tobias Thornes at the University of Oxford.
  • 2015: Evaluator of MPhys projects at the Department of Physics, University of Oxford.
  • 2013 - 2014: Supervisor of MPhys Projects in the Department of Physics, University of Oxford.
External recognitions

AWARDS, PROPOSALS AND GRANTS

  • 2021: Coordinator of the MAELSTROM EuroHPC Joint Undertaking project which involves seven partners within Europe and a budget of 4,3 million Euro.
  • 2021: Co-Author of the AI4Copernicus ICT proposal.
  • 2018-today: Work-package leader of the ESiWACE-2 Centre of Excellence H2020 project (www.esiwace.eu).​
  • 2020 and 2021: Co-Pi of an US INCITE grant to perform seasonal predictions with IFS at 1.45 km resolution for a full season on Summit - the second fastest supercomputer in the world (PI Nils Wedi). The simulation of 2020 has won the "Reader's Choice Best Use of HPC in Physical Science" by HPCwire in 2020.
  • 2020: Best Paper Award at ICLR2020. 
  • ​2020: Co-Pi of an Alan Turing Institute pilot project for a six-months Postdoctoral Research Assistant position at Warwick University (PI Ritabrata Dutta).​
  • 2019: Best Paper Award at PASC2019.
  • 2018: Co-author of the ExtremeEarth Preparatory Project proposal for the preparation of a EU Flagship proposal on high-resolution modeling of weather, climate and solid Earth (http://www.extremeearth.eu/).
  • 2017: Royal Society University Research Fellowship on "Uncertainty in Earth System Modelling".
  • 2016: Main author of an accepted proposal for a three year Postdoctoral Research Assistant position, funded by the Office of Naval Research (PI Tim Palmer).
  • 2016: Principal Investigator of a special project worth 45 million billing units at the high-performance computing centre of ECMWF. ​
  • 2015: Main author of an accepted proposal for a four-month Postdoctoral Research Assistant position, funded by the Recover network (PI Tim Palmer).
  • 2015: Award for Excellence from the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford.

 

SELECTION OF TALKS IN 2020 (mostly virtual):

​​Invited talk at AI for Good Discovery; invited talk at KI NRW AI Monday; invited talk at the IARAI conference; invited seminar speaker at IFAB; invited seminar speaker at AWI; invited seminar speaker at EUMETSAT; invited seminar speaker at ATOS; invited talk at GTC2021; invited talk at KGML2021; invited talk at the EWGLAM workshop; invited talk at the ESiWACE HPC summer school; invited talk at a Dagstuhl workshop; invited talk at the University Bayreuth; invited talk at the University of Tuebingen; invited seminar talk at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; invited talk at the Cambridge Environmental Data Science Group; invited seminar talk at the NCI TechTake; invited talk at Imperial College London; invited talk at AARMS

SCIENTIFIC REVIEWER

Peter has written referee reports for articles in the following scientific journals:

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Geoscience Communication, Geosciences, Geoscientific Model Development, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, Journal of Computational Physics, Nature Communications, Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, Nonlinearity, Monthly Weather Review, Science Advances, Scientific Data, Tellus A, Weather and Climate Dynamics, and Weather and Forecasting.