Patrick Applegate is a Scientific Programmer with the SCRiM (Sustainable Climate Risk Management) network, hosted by the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State. In this role, Patrick helps researchers do the computing-related parts of their work more effectively. In particular, Patrick writes new code in support of ongoing projects (especially in the R programming language), curates and documents existing code and data sets, and helps research students learn to write code.

Patrick earned his Ph. D. in Geosciences at Penn State and is first author or co-author of 20 peer-reviewed scientific papers. His research treats topics including ice sheets and their contributions to sea level rise, methods for estimating the ages of glacial deposits, and the application of statistical methods to problems in the geosciences.

Patrick is also co-editor (with Klaus Keller) of Risk Analysis in the Earth Sciences: A Lab Manual with Exercises in R, a free textbook that teaches the Earth science and statistical concepts needed for assessing climate-related risks.

He previously worked as a postdoc in the Bolin Centre for Climate Research at Stockholm University in Sweden and as a postdoc and Research Associate at Penn State’s main campus. He has also taught college-level courses in geology, geography, and statistics at SUNY-Geneseo and Penn State DuBois.

Patrick recently completed Penn State World Campus’ Certificate in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program, and is working toward the Data Science certificate offered by Johns Hopkins University through Coursera.