GOKUL UDAYAKUMAR
Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP)
Hamburg,HH
1
Language
1
Certification
8
years of professional experience
Results-driven Climate and Environmental Data Scientist with four years of research experience in atmospheric modeling, extreme-event impact assessment, and geospatial analysis. Expertise in GIS, remote sensing, and dataset analysis to characterize environmental extremes and convey uncertainty to stakeholders. Co-author of two peer-reviewed papers. Led re-implementation of an atmospheric model on HPC, demonstrating rapid technical fluency and independent problem-solving skills.
Skills
Model experiments: Design
execution and diagnostics of atmospheric/climate model runs (UA-ICON/ICON
MIMAS–LIMA
STILT
WRF); Output validation; multi-model aModel comparison modeling
Climate data analysis
Climate risk assessment
Ensemble modeling
Programming languages (Python
Julia
R and MATLAB)
Microsoft office
Teamwork and collaboration
Time management
Education
MSc Integrated Climate System Sciences - Physics & Biogeochemistry track
- Final grade 1.58 (German scale; 1.0 = best). Thesis: Influence of atmospheric vertical wind and turbulence on noctilucent clouds - developed and applied a mesospheric model in a coupled Lagrangian–Eulerian framework on HPC; results published (Frontiers, 2026).
- Coursework: Climate Modelling
- Statistical Methods
- Data Assimilation
- Atmospheric Dynamics
- Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
- Numerical Weather Prediction.
- GPA: 1.58
BS-MS (5-year integrated) - Earth & Environmental Sciences
- CPI 7.62/10 (220 credits). Thesis: Characterising uncertainties in fossil-fuel CO2 emission estimates over Indian cities - quantified spatio-temporal uncertainty across four global inventories (ODIAC, FFDAS, ICOS-COFFEE, EDGAR) with the STILT Lagrangian transport model; contributed to Sukumaran et al. (2024), IGR: Atmospheres.
- Coursework: Probability & Statistics
- Environmental Data Analysis
- Atmospheric Science
- Remote Sensing & GIS
- Greenhouse Gas Budgets & Climate Change
- Fluid Mechanics.
- GPA: 7.62/10
Work History
Research Assistant (student position) - Scientific Project Support
1 Year 7 Months- Designed, executed and evaluated multi-decade simulations with a coupled Lagrangian–Eulerian atmospheric model (LIMA–MIMAS) on a Linux HPC cluster; led simulation design and diagnostic evaluation for a peer-reviewed study on how vertical wind and turbulence drive noctilucent-cloud variability (Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, 2026).
- Re-implemented a legacy Fortran atmospheric model in Julia and validated the new code against 30+ years of reference output with statistical consistency checks - direct experience in model–model comparison, bias and error characterisation, and reproducibility.
- Quantifying the response of the summer mesosphere to the 27-day solar rotation cycle in model output - isolating the contribution of one periodic driver from internal variability, an attribution-type analysis.
- Extending the group's atmospheric model with a new process representation (meteoric dust microphysics); documenting model changes for the research group.
Research Assistant - UA-ICON Model Development
5 Months- Built automated Python/Bash diagnostic pipelines for output of the UA-ICON general circulation model, reducing post-processing turnaround by ~50%.
- Model evaluation on HPC: consistency checks across model configurations and comparison of simulated fields against observational datasets.
- Developed rapid visualisation tools for near-real-time inspection of atmospheric model fields.
Scientific Annotator - Climate AI
2 Months- Evaluated 1,500+ papers for a German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) project curating training data for LLM-based scientific reasoning, assessing logical consistency, evidential support and reproducibility - experience at the interface of AI methods and climate literature.
Research Assistant (student position) - Soil Biogeochemistry
6 Months- Measured CO2/CH4 surface fluxes with LiCOR trace-gas analyzers; calibration, QA/QC and data integration for soil–atmosphere exchange studies.
LiDAR Operator
- Utilized ground-based LiDAR for atmospheric data collection; Python QC/visualisation scripts on a Linux HPC system.
- Jun–Jul 2023
Research Assistant - Climate Projections & Risk Assessment
- Analysed historical cyclone impacts over India using ERA5 and IMD reanalysis - extreme-event analysis with geospatial methods.
- Translated ensemble climate-model projections into structured climate-risk reports for policy and stakeholder audiences, communicating ensemble spread and uncertainty to non-specialists.
- Developed GIS boundary datasets for 300+ locations integrating multi-source environmental data.
- Mar – Sep 2022
Student Intern
- Benchmarked eddy-covariance and flask CO2 records to ensure data accuracy; managed large NetCDF archives for efficient data retrieval.
- May–Jul 2019
- Assisted in data collection for climate research projects, ensuring accuracy and relevance of gathered information.
- Conducted literature reviews on meteorological phenomena to support ongoing research initiatives.
- Collaborated with senior researchers to analyze weather patterns using statistical software tools.
Student Intern
2 Months- Analyzed global CO2 variability and its connections to monsoon dynamics using ERA5 reanalysis.
- May–Jul 2018
- Conducted data collection and analysis for climate modeling projects.
- Assisted in the development of meteorological research methodologies.
- Collaborated with researchers to enhance predictive weather models.
Certification
- INSPIRE Fellowship, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India (2016–2021) - national merit fellowship for top science students., Advanced Machine Learning in Climate Science - Universität Hamburg (2024)
- Python for Data Science & AI - IBM (2022, 2024)
- AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations, and Claude Code in Action - Anthropic.
Languages
English (professional), German (basic), Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam (native/fluent)
PUBLICATIONS
- Vellalassery, A., Baumgarten, G., Grygalashvyly, M., Lübken, F.-J., Udayakumar, G. (2026). Influence of atmospheric vertical wind and turbulence on noctilucent clouds. Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences. doi:10.3389/fspas.2026.1721062
- Sukumaran, J., Pillai, D., Thilakan, V. M., Lekshmi, S., Udayakumar, G., et al. (2024). How critical is the accuracy of atmospheric transport modeling to improve urban CO2 emission estimates in India? A Lagrangian-based approach. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 129(13). doi:10.1029/2023JD039680
AWARDS & CERTIFICATIONS
INSPIRE Fellowship, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India (2016–2021) - national merit fellowship for top science students.
Timeline
Research Assistant (student position) - Scientific Project Support
Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP)
02.2025 - CurrentRead More
Research Assistant - UA-ICON Model Development
IAP, Kühlungsborn
05.2024 - 10.2024Read More
Scientific Annotator - Climate AI
DFKI, Berlin
02.2024 - 04.2024Read More
LiDAR Operator
Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics
07.2023 - 07.2023Read More
Research Assistant (student position) - Soil Biogeochemistry
Universität Hamburg
05.2023 - 11.2023Read More
Research Assistant - Climate Projections & Risk Assessment
The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)
09.2022 - 09.2022Read More
Student Intern
Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology
05.2019 - 05.2019Read More
Student Intern
IISER Bhopal
05.2018 - 07.2018Read More
IISER Bhopal
BS-MS (5-year integrated) from Earth & Environmental Sciences
Read More
Universität Hamburg
MSc Integrated Climate System Sciences from Physics & Biogeochemistry track
Read More