A computational scientist is a person skilled in scientific computing. This person is usually a

scientist A scientist is a person who Scientific method, researches to advance knowledge in an Branches of science, area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engag ...

, a

statistician A statistician is a person who works with Theory, theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private sector, private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, a ...

, an applied mathematician, or an

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

who applies

high-performance computing High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into ...

and sometimes

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

in different ways to advance the state-of-the-art in their respective applied discipline;

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

social sciences Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among members within those societies. The term was former ...

and so forth. Thus scientific computing has increasingly influenced many areas such as

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

, law, and

medicine Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...

to name a few. Because a computational scientist's work is generally applied to

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

and other disciplines, they are not necessarily trained in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

specifically, though concepts of computer science are often used. Computational scientists are typically researchers at academic universities, national labs, or tech companies. One of the tasks of a computational scientist is to analyze large amounts of data, often from astrophysics or related fields, as these can often generate huge amounts of data. Computational scientists often have to clean up and calibrate the data to a usable form for an effective analysis. Computational scientists are also tasked with creating artificial data through computer models and simulations.

References

Computational science Computer occupations Science occupations Mathematical science occupations Computational fields of study {{Computational-science-stub