Wim Cardoen, University of Utah

Wim R. Cardoen has been working at the Center for High Performance Computing for over five years as a Staff Scientist. He is a computational chemist by training. In that role he has developed (paralllel) electronic structure code as well as molecular dynamic code (classical & quantum). Lately, he has been working on a Big Data Project in the field of bioinformatics which is based on a Hadoop framework. He is also involved in the parallel implementation of a code which studies transit planning. Along with these projects, Wim also does software installations, along with providing user training and support.

Sean Cleveland, University of Hawaii

Sean Cleveland is a Cyberinfrastructure Research Scientist in the Department of Cyberinfrastructure within Information Technology Services at the University of Hawaii. He focuses on supporting the research mission by providing technology assistance and solutions for researchers across the University of Hawaii system. In addition, he is assisting in the rollout of new centralized computing resources and services for the University system. Sean earned his B.S. in Computer Science from Montana State University in 2002 and his doctorate in Microbiology, with an emphasis in Bioinformatics, from Montana State University in 2013. In his graduate work, he focused on studying the translation/transcription complex for Mononegavirales using in silico methods to evaluate evolutionary dynamics, disorder, compensatory mutations and intra-residue contact prediction. During his time at MSU, Sean worked in the Center for Computational Biology as a software developer and then as the Director for Software and Informatics within Research Computing at MSU. Throughout his time at MSU, Sean was involved in developing applications to store, manage and share data across different domains, from Virology to Geoscience, all the while researching and implementing solutions that provided usable software tools for investigators. These experiences and varied approaches to derive organization paradigms to the data problem provided many opportunities to explore the full data-lifecycle and the inherent issues that need to be tackled have become a passion.

Martin Cuma, University of Utah

Martin Cuma is a scientific application consultant at the Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC) at the University of Utah, advising the University researchers on deployment of their applications on the CHPC computers. A computational chemist by training, Martin has advised numerous researchers over his 15 years at CHPC and over the last 8 years focused on collaboration with the Consortium for Electromagnetic Modeling and Inversion (CEMI) at the Department of Geology and Geophysics. In his research with the CEMI, he focuses on development of highly parallel geophysical modeling and inversion methods. Martin also manages CHPC satellite location for the XSEDE virtual education classes and teaches short courses on parallel programming to CHPC users.

Christina Koch, University of Wisconsin – Madison

Christina comes to research computing facilitation from an academic background in mathematics and diverse experiences in computing, education, and online collaboration. As a mathematics graduate student, she specialized in discrete mathematics, and also took computer science courses and developed programming skills in Python, R, and other scientific computing tools. Her instructional experience includes adult education, university courses, and, most recently, software skills workshops with international non-profit Software Carpentry. Christina has also collaborated on multiple online educational resources, including a wiki-based math learning resource and lesson material for Software Carpentry workshops. She enjoys integrating these skills as a facilitator, especially applying effective communication and educational methods to convey complex technical ideas.

Lauren Michael, University of Wisconsin – Madison

Lauren began working as the first Research Computing Facilitator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in January 2013, where she assists researchers in leveraging the campus’s Center for High Throughput Computing and navigating the world of compute-related services and training. In her past research experiences, Lauren applied compute-intensive methods to study the mechanisms of biomolecular folding, dynamics, and interactions during the completion of B.S. degrees in Biology and Chemistry, as well as a M.S. in Biophysics. Alongside her research efforts, Lauren enjoyed a variety of teaching experiences, completed a graduate minor in Life Sciences Communication from UW-Madison, and gained formal experience in science communication as an editor and writer. In her current role, Lauren enjoys applying her communication and teaching skills to assist a wide variety of researchers in achieving their computational goals.

Ron Merrill, University of Hawaii

Ron began part time with the University of Hawaii’s Cyberinfrastructure Group in December 2013 in order to assist with the acquisition and deployment of the university’s first centrally managed central HPC facility. Ron continued as Computer Systems Manager at the International Pacific Research Center. Since the IPRC was founded in 1998, he managed the HPC facilities there. In preparation for the delivery of the UH HPC system in October 2014, Ron began phasing out his work at the IPRC and became the High Performance Computing Manager with UH Cyberinfrastructure in September 2014. The system passed acceptance testing in December 2014 and has been in use by a small group of early adopters from various UH departments. Access to the machine for the wider UH research community will begin at the end of this month. Ron holds a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry from Yale University. His graduate work involved using EPR spectroscopy to determine the ground state symmetry of the benzoyloxyl radical. As a post doc, he used solid-state NMR to study singlet reactive intermediates in organic glasses. In industry, he worked 8 years as an NMR spectroscopist supporting catalysis research at an oil company. In 1996, he became a Unix systems administrator at a web hosting company.

Anita Orendt, University of Utah

Anita Orendt has been a Staff Scientist for Molecular Sciences at Utah’s Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC) since 1999, and in Fall 2013 she became CHPC’s Assistant Director for Research Consulting & Faculty Engagement. In this role, she oversees the faculty collaboration efforts of all CHPC staff members and acts as the point person for communication with the CHPC user community. With a degree in Physical Chemistry, she consults and collaborates with various research groups on the use of molecular science applications, along with doing software installations and providing general user support. Anita also is an XSEDE Campus Champion for the University of Utah and an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Chemistry.

David Schanzenbach, University of Hawaii

David has been a member of the University of Hawaii’s Cyberinfrastructure (CI) group since April 2015. He was brought on board to help manage the UHHPC, as well as to aid in supporting the research mission by providing technical assistance for researchers associated with the University of Hawaii system. David obtained a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2007, and his Masters in Computer Science, with Dr. Henri Casanova, from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2011, with a focus in high performance computing. David’s research focused on proving the feasibility of using Dynamic Fractional Resource Sharing (DFRS) to allocate resources on a cluster. While a graduate student, David was also a researcher assistant, in which he worked as a system administrator, as well as a software developer for bioinformatic pipelines, applications and web portals. After obtaining his Master degree, David continued on as a Junior Researcher on the INBRE, and the subsequent COBRE grant continuing to provide system administration and software development support to multiple researchers.

Erin Shaw, University of Southern California

Erin is an Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research and Education Facilitator (ACI-REF) at USC’s Center for High-Performance Computing (HPC), where she helps both traditional and non-traditional researchers make effective use of HPC resources. She has led HPC’s education, outreach and training effort since 2015 and is responsible for program reporting and evaluation. Before joining HPC, Erin was a computer scientist and research investigator at USC’s Information Sciences Institute, where she focused on developing computational technologies to model and assess communication and learning. Prior to moving to California, Erin worked as a research programmer at Cornell University in New York, as a software engineer at a start-up company in Massachusetts and as a math/science education volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps in Nepal. She has a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics, an M.S. in Computer Graphics and an M.A. in Online and Distance Education. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in educational psychology.

Cesar Sul, University of Southern California

Cesar Sul is an Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research and Education Facilitator (ACI-REF) at USC’s Center for High-Performance Computing. He has a master of science in physics from San Jose State University (awarded in 2016). In his research, he tested the dynamical stability of extra-solar planets by running Monte Carlo simulations on the Puma cluster at Kean University in New Jersey. While a graduate student at SJSU, he also taught classes and ran workshops on topics including mechanics, optics, waves, electricity and magnetism, and circuits.

In his current position, Cesar helps USC researchers optimize their use of the computational resources available to them through training, outreach, and technical support.

Ashwin Srinath, Clemson University

Ashwin Srinath is part of the Advanced Computing and Research Methods
group at the Cyberinfrastructure Technology Integration group. His primary role is to help researchers effectively use high-performance computing resources such as the Palmetto cluster to accomplish their research tasks. As part of this effort, he regularly organizes training in topics relating to research computing. He is an instructor for Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry, and also maintainer for the Software Carpentry Unix shell lessons. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering, and doing research in Computational Fluid Mechanics.

Plamen G Krastev, Harvard University

Plamen G Krastev is a Research Computing Associate and Computational Scientist in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Research Computing group at Harvard University, where he assists researchers in implementing efficient and scalable computing solutions. He works closely with investigators across the science and engineering departments and help them address their computational challenges. He also delivers lectures and workshops on High-Performance Computing (HPC) to the university scholars. Plamen received B.S. and M.S. in laser physics from Sofia University, Bulgaria, M.S. in space physics from University of Texas, and Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics from University of Idaho in 2006. After completing his doctoral research, he spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Texas A&M University studying properties of dense nuclear matter, neutron stars and gravitational waves. From 2008 to 2011 he was a postdoctoral researcher at San Diego State University (SDSU) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) where he studied nuclear structure and developed high-performance shell model computer codes with the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) Universal Nuclear Energy Density Functional (UNED) project.