PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Mark Taylor

Also known as Mark Alan Taylor, Mark A. Taylor

Mark Taylor is a mathematician at Sandia National Laboratories who develops numerical methods for climate models and is one of the authors of ClimSim, a dataset for training machine-learning emulators of climate physics. He earned a PhD at New York University's Courant Institute in 1992, joined Sandia in 2004, and shared the 2014 DOE Secretary's Honor Award for unifying the department's climate modeling research community. Sandia promoted him to Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff in 2018. In 2023, he led the submission for the SCREAM cloud-resolving atmosphere model, which won the inaugural Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modeling after a run on the Frontier supercomputer, and ClimSim received a NeurIPS Outstanding Datasets and Benchmarks Paper award. He is Chief Computational Scientist of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model project at Sandia.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 1992

    A Courant Institute doctorate

    He completes a PhD in mathematics at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 1992.

  2. 2004

    Joining Sandia National Laboratories

    He joins Sandia National Laboratories in 2004. His mimetic and conservative formulation of the spectral element method is one of the atmospheric dynamical cores used in the Community Earth System Model and DOE's ACME project. He also develops the Hamiltonian structure-preserving formulation of the spectral element method used in E3SM's atmospheric component model.

  3. 2014

    DOE Secretary's Honor Award

    He receives the Department of Energy's 2014 Secretary's Honor Award for his work as chief computational scientist of the Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) executive council team. He shares it with William Collins of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and David Bader of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

  4. 2018

    Chief computational scientist of E3SM

    The Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM), the work of eight Department of Energy labs, is unveiled in 2018 with him as its chief computational scientist. He leads a 30-person Sandia group that makes the model code easier to configure and test. Sandia also promotes him to Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff in 2018.

  5. 2020

    Leading the E3SM-MMF project

    In 2020, he leads the Energy Exascale Earth System Model – Multiscale Modeling Framework (E3SM-MMF) subproject, which works to improve the simulation of the water cycle and precipitation.

  6. 2023

    SCREAM wins a Gordon Bell prize

    In 2023, E3SM developers use a 10-day window on the Frontier exascale supercomputer to run SCREAM, the Simple Cloud Resolving E3SM Atmosphere Model, at global 3.25-kilometer resolution. He calls the result the first global cloud-resolving model to simulate a world's year of climate in a day. As lead author of the SCREAM submission, he sees it win the inaugural Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modeling in November 2023.

  7. 2023

    The ClimSim dataset

    He is one of the authors of ClimSim, a dataset of 5.7 billion pairs of input and output vectors from E3SM-MMF multi-scale climate simulations, built for training machine-learning emulators of high-resolution physics. The paper receives an Outstanding Datasets and Benchmarks Paper award at NeurIPS 2023.

  8. As of October 2026

    SCREAM at 100 meters

    In January 2026, he coauthors a Geoscientific Model Development paper with Jishi Zhang, Peter Bogenschutz and Philip Cameron-Smith that runs SCREAM at 100-meter resolution over the San Francisco Bay Area. He is Chief Computational Scientist of the E3SM project at Sandia National Laboratories.

Career

  1. Since 2004National Nuclear Security AdministrationDistinguished Member of the Technical Staff

Education

  1. 1992Courant Institute of Mathematical SciencesPhD

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Mark Taylor. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes United States Department of Energy. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes New York University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  4. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes New York University. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Mark Taylor yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Mark Alan Taylor – Center for Computing Research (CCR) sandia.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. talk: DOE Energy Exascale Earth System Model, 2:30 Tue 10/31, ITE325 – Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering news.cs.umbc.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Sandia researcher Mark Taylor receives highest award from DOE Secretary – News Releases newsreleases.sandia.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Exascale – LabNews sandia.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Sandia-led Earth System Modeling Project Featured in ECP Podcast – Center for Computing Research (CCR) sandia.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Sandia cloud-resolving climate model meets world’s fastest supercomputer – News Releases newsreleases.sandia.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. LLNL-led SCREAM team clinches inaugural Gordon Bell Prize for climate modeling | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory llnl.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Cloud Simulations on Frontier Awarded Gordon Bell Special Prize for Climate Modeling – Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility olcf.ornl.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Announcing the NeurIPS 2023 Paper Awards – NeurIPS Blog blog.neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. ClimSim: An open large-scale dataset for training high-resolution physics emulators in hybrid multi-scale climate simulators arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. GMD - Zooming in: SCREAM at 100 m using regional refinement over the San Francisco Bay Area gmd.copernicus.org. Checked 21 October 2026.