Work / Research

World domination at all costs

Starting June 2009 I joined Purdue University's Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC) as a Software Engineer. I am also a part time doctoral student. While graduate school is mostly about research, I still prefer the teaching side of things. That said, I have been involved in a number of research projects here at Purdue. Under the direction of David Meyer I am currently pursuing my PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Below is a time-line leading up to my collaboration and ultimate alliance with the evil empire.
RCAC can probably best be described as the research arm of ITaP (Information Technology at Purdue). In this capacity I work with the Hub Technology Group on HUBzero, a "platform for building powerful web sites that support scientific discovery, learning, and collaboration. Originally created by researchers at Purdue University in conjunction with the National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN) to support nanoHUB.org, it now supports a wide variety of other hubs." HUBzero's mission is essentially to "revolutionize the development of cyberinfrastructure for scientific collaboration."

My role with HUBzero consists of two main activities. Lately a not insignificant portion of my time is spent on system management. Primarily, however, I am developing a new distributed virtual operating system. I lovingly refer to it as "Skynet," though that is not its official name. Divulging information related to this project would hinder its ultimate evolution. Therefore, you should instead stare at this beautiful logo:

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Someday I may end up with a PhD. Until then, I am content furthering the progress of digital systems and their ultimate domination over mankind.
As the present sole employee of this startup company, I am engaged in just about every aspect of the product design and construction. Various tasks range from part selection to printed circuit board (PCB) design as well as schematic capture. I also do a fair amount of soldering.

I have gained a working familiarity with the open source gEDA software suite, PIC microcontroller assembly, BeagleBoard internals, the I2C bus specification, and hardware considerations related to devices with considerable inductive discharge.

In short, I have designed an entire digital control system and interface from the ground up. My research project and thesis topic involves research into distributed, virtual operating systems. As time progresses more information regarding my thesis will become available.

In the mean time, feel free to check out NCN's website. In particular, my research relates fairly closely to nanoHUB. Assisted in the development and testing of storage area network (SAN)-related devices, software, and firmware. Sadly, a good portion of this project is covered by a NDA. Managed various aspects of a grid computing project involving Sun Microsystems and Purdue University. This involved developing and implementing scripts allowing interoperability between ASIC design software and Sun's GridEngine as well as collecting and analyzing hardware usage data to evaluate the effectiveness of GridEngine and Sun Ray Server software.

Here is a presentation that Dr. Johnson gave on the project. Assisted in the development of low power SRAM cache, utilizing Cadence Virtuoso to perform transistor-level design of clock subsystem (implemented as a ring oscillator) as well as hSpice to simulate and test for errors. After a six week training period, we were granted access to core academic systems for the university including the registrar (grades), financial aid, and the bursar (billing). This access was utilized to provide telephone and face-to-face counseling of students and parents regarding financial aid questions and problems.

This position also entailed assisting in the training of newly hired peer counselors as well as extensive knowledge regarding the policies and requirements governing federal aid programs (eg, the Stafford Loan program, Pell Grants, Perkins Loans, etc) and university-specific aid including academic and need-based scholarships, grants, and loans. I was the computer geek for a small company for three years. This entailed just about every conceivable task from configuration and maintenance of the local area network to repair of computer systems to setup and installation of new software.

Other tasks included the creation and management of the company website, the design and implementation of a bill of materials database using mysql and PHP, and even assisting the accountant in running payroll and managing accounts receivable and payable.