Julie Prestopnik

Julie Prestopnik is a Software Engineer at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, where she has worked for more than two decades supporting the development and long-term sustainment of atmospheric science software. Working within the Research Applications Laboratory (RAL), she is a lead contributor to the METplus Earth System Model Verification and Diagnostics System, an internationally used numerical weather prediction verification framework deployed at organizations including NOAA, NCAR, the U.S. Air Force, the Naval Research Laboratory, the UK Met Office, and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. She is also co-lead of the community pillar for FastEddy®, NCAR’s large-eddy simulation model. Her technical focus spans software installation on diverse HPC systems, documentation standards, cybersecurity compliance (including STIGs), CI/CD workflows, and user support. She leads the CSF Software Practice Exchange Committee, a collaborative effort drawing input from across NSF NCAR to identify effective approaches and lessons learned in scientific software development, with the goal of producing shared guidance that supports high-quality, sustainable, and collaborative software practices. Earlier in her career she contributed to applied research projects including the Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS®), Pikalert®, Graphical Turbulence Guidance (GTG), and In-Situ Turbulence. She holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado Boulder and a B.S. in Accounting from the University of Central Florida. A graduate of UCAR’s LEAD program and active mentor in the UCAR Mentoring Program, she is committed to fostering inclusive, psychologically safe team environments and to building collaborative community resources that endure.