• Title
    Staff Scientist
  • Email
    golaz1@llnl.gov
  • Phone
    (925) 423-6912
  • Organization
    Not Available

Professional Experience

  • Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA (2015 to present).

  • NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ (2005-2015).

  • NRC Research Associateship Programs postdoctoral fellowship, Naval Research Laboratory, Monterey, CA (2002-2005).

Research Interests

My research interests evolve around developing numerical (computer) models to simulate and understand the weather and climate of the Earth. Over the years, I have worked with models spanning a wide range of spatial and temporal scales and applications; from relatively simple models that can run on a laptop to simulate the evolution of individual clouds to complex Earth System Models requiring High Performance Computing resources to simulate our changing climate.

Currently, I serve as the lead of the Coupled Model group within the DOE Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) Project (PI Dave Bader). The Coupled Model group is responsible for delivering the physical climate model consisting of atmosphere, ocean, sea-ice, land, and river components. Two versions of E3SM have been released to date: E3SMv in 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1029/2018MS001603) and E3SMv2 in 2022 (https://doi.org/10.1029/2022MS003156). The next version E3SMv3 is scheduled for release in 2024.

Prior to joining LLNL in 2015, I worked for 10 years at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton, NJ. This is where I learned the ropes of climate modeling working on the development of the GFDL-CM3 climate model. I subsequently co-led the development of the atmosphere component of the GFDL-CM4 model. Before that, I held a three-year National Research Council (NRC) postdoctoral appointment at the Naval Research Laboratory, Monterey, CA working on large eddy simulations to study boundary layer clouds with the Navy’s COAMPS model. I hold a M.S. and PhD in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University. The subject of my PhD dissertation was the development of a new cloud and planetary boundary layer parameterization that later became known as CLUBB (Cloud Layers Unified By Binormals).

Ph.D., Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 2002

M.S., Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 1997

B.S., Physics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, 1995

For a comprehensive list of publications, please refer to:

ResearcherID: https://www.researcherid.com/rid/D-5007-2014

ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1616-5435