Gerard Cats was born on 26 February 1950. He obtained his master
degree in theoretical physics at Utrecht University in 1973.
He was employed by Stichting FOM to do research
on the quantification of gravity until 1 January 1975.
On that date he became employed by KNMI.
From August 1979 until December 1982, and during a few shorter
periods afterwards, he was at the European Centre for Medium
Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading, UK.
Research
His initial field of research at KNMI was air pollution dispersion.
During his first stay at ECMWF his research field became
data assimilation. From this field his interests gradually shifted
towards the application of computing science in numerical weather
prediction. In this context, he now is intensively involved in
the research at LIACS, the Institute of Advanced Computing Science of
Leiden University.
See also the list of publications.
The HIRLAM project
Since 1986 he has been involved in the
HIRLAM
project.
During the first three years he participated in
the development of the data assimilation scheme for the
HIRLAM system.
Between 1990 and 2006 he was the HIRLAM system manager.
In this position, he was responsible for the maintenance of
a `reference version' of the HIRLAM system, and
for keeping it available to the institutes that participate in
the HIRLAM project and to other organisations
that want to use the system for research purposes.
As a member of the HIRLAM management group the
HIRLAM system manager is responsible for the
research and development of all components of a numerical weather
prediction system that are not directly related to the data
assimilation scheme or forecast model, such as optimization of computer usage,
collection of input data, postprocessing, system validation and verification, and
communications between researchers and with users.
Since 2006 Gerard is involved in several projects within or related to
the HIRLAM programme; in some of those as the project leader.