01.08.2020

Joachim Biercamp joined the DKRZ as a scientific staff member in the field of visualization shortly after its foundation in 1988 and has made a significant contribution to its development and success. In February 2001, he took over the leadership of the department Application Support, which supports climate scientists in the optimal use of computer resources and offers a range of services covering modeling and programming.

As the essential link between the high-performance data center and Earth system science, Joachim Biercamp also played a key role in the procurement of the DKRZ systems HLRE (NEC SX-6), HLRE-2 (IBM Power 6), HLRE-3 (Atos / Bull) and also the new system HLRE-4 (Atos / Bull), which will start operations in the coming year.

Since the team of the department Application Support is well-versed in the specialized properties of the current supercomputers, it has, under the leadership of Joachim Biercamp, successfully supported DKRZ users in carrying out climate simulations, in the parallelization and optimization of the climate models, as well as in the analysis and visualization of the simulation results.

In recent years, Joachim Biercamp has particularly committed himself to internationally oriented flagship projects to boost the development of climate and earth system models and their adaptation to the constantly evolving computer system technology.

Since 2009 he has been involved in the project of the European earth system modeling infrastructure IS-ENES, which has set up an internet-based portal. Thus IS-ENES has enabled the climate research community in Europe to network and develop numerous joint strategies and projects.

Since 2012 Joachim Biercamp has been a member of the steering committee of the HD(CP)2 project. The project focused on high-resolution cloud and precipitation simulations and the comparison of model and observation data.

Until the end of 2022, Joachim Biercamp will continue in his position as the coordinator for the European project ESiWACE - the European center of excellence for weather and climate modeling on future exascale supercomputers.

In addition, he will also continue his activities in other national and international projects, such as the initiative "National Strategy on Earth system modelling" or the EU project ESCAPE-2.

We thank Joachim Biercamp warmly for his commitment and wish his successor Hendryk Bockelmann good luck in his new role!