Zach Cobell is a Research Engineer with the Institute’s natural systems modeling group.

Cobell graduated with a degree in civil engineering and environmental engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 2010. During his time at Notre Dame, he traveled to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and toured areas impacted by the storm. From that experience, he developed an interest in the numerical modeling of hurricane events and began conducting research in the university’s Computational Hydraulics Lab under Dr. Joannes Westerink.

Since graduating, Cobell has helped lead numerical modeling studies throughout the United States, including the storm surge and wave analysis for both the 2012 and 2017 Louisiana Coastal Master Plans. He has also worked extensively on optimization of numerical models in high performance computing environments and serves as a key member of the ADCIRC Model Development Group.

At the Institute, his research focuses on coastal and riverine processes, hurricane driven storm surge, and waves, and coastal storm surge forecast applications.