Zack Galbreath is a technical leader on Kitware’s Scientific Computing Team located in Clifton Park, New York. His mission is to help others develop high-quality, reproducible software that will stand the test of time. As a project lead, he is focused on understanding technical requirements and delivering satisfactory solutions to our customers.

Zack currently maintains and develops CDash: an open source web dashboard for displaying the results of building and test software. He also collaborates with the community of developers behind the Spack package manager. Here, his primary focus is cloud-based GitLab CI infrastructure that ensures Spack can continue to install a wide variety of important packages as changes are made to its underlying code.

Additionally, Zack supports the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory as they develop XGC. XGC is a gyrokinetic particle-in-cell code that simulates magnetically confined plasma for nuclear fusion reactors. Zack’s role is to make sure that XGC builds and runs successfully on a variety of supercomputers. To achieve this, he works to expand and improve XGC’s automated testing infrastructure.

Some of Zack’s past collaborations involve pursuing solutions to important problems, such as:

• Open access and reproducible science (Insight Journal)
• Schizophrenia (National Alliance for Medical Image Computing)
• Investigating the brain’s immune response to neural implants (graduate studies at RPI)

Zack is also one of our resident experts in CMake and has traveled to commercial organizations, conferences, government labs, and more to teach courses. Some notable ones include Google, the Supercomputing Conference, and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.

In addition to his technical work, Zack is involved in Kitware’s recruiting and mentoring efforts, as well as business development initiatives. As a prior Open Source Technology Program (OSTP) participant himself, he now helps mentor and lead some of the new OSTP engineers.

Zack received his master’s degree in computer system engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). His thesis focused on identifying and analyzing cellular structures in 3D images of brain tissue. Zack also received his bachelor’s degree in computer science and philosophy from RPI. 

Awards

• R&D 100 Award for Spack presented by R&D World and WTWH Media, LLC, 2019