Bill Turnbull

Bill Turnbull is Deputy CIO and Director, High Performance Computing and Communications Office at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Bill oversees the day-to-day operation of NOAA’s IT management as it evolves to implement ITMRA and other modern IT management initiatives, and leads NOAA’s IT research as it evolves from the HPCC program.

Bill has been an active leader in the computer revolution from the beginning of his career. As a leader of NOAA’s HPCC program, he coordinates NOAA’s participation in the OSTP High End Computing Revitalization Task Force; he led NOAA’s participation in the Next Generation Internet and Abilene programs, led efforts to provide reliability and redundancy to NOAA’s hurricane forecast website which is subjected to peak loads of millions of visitors per day, and has worked to provide improved computing resources (both hardware and software) to meet NOAA’s high performance computing needs. Earlier, he directed NOAA’s Environmental Information Services office as NOAA modernized its information services moving onto the Internet and World Wide Web. Bill led the formation of the Techniques Development Group in the Climate Research Division and moved the Division into the modern era of RISC-based networked workstations from what had previously been a minicomputer oriented research effort resulting in greatly increased computing power, reduced turn-around times, and more rapid time to solution. Throughout his career, he has introduced new computing techniques to whatever position he has occupied as a means of improving the business processes of his organization.

Bill has been involved in numerous interagency activities including the OSTP chartered Information Technology Research and Development Working Group which leads interagency coordination of advanced IT Research government-wide, and the Government Information Technology Services (GITS). He led the multi-agency team that developed the National Environmental Data Index.

Bill is a retired Captain of the NOAA Corps. He is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program of the Information Resources Management College, National Defense University, earned a Master of Public Administration from the University of Washington and a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Illinois. He is a member of the IEEE and ACM. He has received numerous awards including the Department of Commerce Silver Medal for development of the National Environmental Data Index and the creation and promotion of NOAA’s on-line data services, and the NOAA Administrator’s award for his work improving hurricane advisory dissemination.