Bio
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 37830-6485 [July 1993 to present.]
November 2024 to present.
Interim Group Leader for the DAQ (Data Acquisition) Software Group, Neutron Instrument
Technology (NIT) Section, Neutron Technologies Division (NTD), Neutron Sciences Directorate
(NScD), for the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR).
Oversee a top-notch team of engineers and computer scientists, in close collaboration with the
DAQ Hardware Group, to conceive, design, implement, test, deploy and maintain a complex
suite of control system software for the SNS and HFIR beamlines. Our group applies the EPICS
control system software, and also maintains the legacy “SpICE” beamline control software at
several HFIR beamlines, to enable data acquisition of fast event-based data and “slow-controls”
sample environment devices and subsystems, for the pursuit of scientific discovery by the Neu-
tron Sciences Directorate and science/engineering users worldwide. Maintain productive en-
gagement, comradery and team morale under stressful circumstances and tight deadlines, while
coordinating group liaison with many other collaborating groups within the organization, as
well as external vendors and various user teams. Managed several major ongoing projects by
the team, including: VENUS imaging beamline construction and commissioning into the user
program; Upgrade of Neutron Spin Echo (NSE) beamline from legacy Taco to full EPICS control
system; Major Cybersecurity compliance overhaul of all 600+ beamline computer systems at
SNS and HFIR; Major controls software Upgrade project to successfully port All EPICS soft-
ware Modules/IOCs (Input/Output Controllers) from RedHat7 to RedHat9 operating system,
including upgrading all Python2 software to Python3 and all EPICS3 control infrastructure to
EPICS7, across all the dozens of SNS and HFIR beamlines; Upgraded Windows10 (and older)
sample environment systems to latest Windows11 operating system, replacing older incompat-
ible hardware with new, and transitioning the HFIR SpICE beamlines to an extended support
Windows10-LTSC operating system. Also continue to support and extend ADARA Streaming
Data Acquisition software suite (See below) and various EPICS Beamline Control Software.
April 2023 to October 2024.
Senior Research Scientist, Software Architect and Control System Engineer in the DAQ (Data Acquisition) Software Group, Neutron Instrument Technology (NIT) Section, Neutron Technologies Division (NTD), Neutron Sciences Directorate (NScD). Designing and developing "live" streaming data acquisition software and various beamline control system software for the experimental neutron scattering facilities at ORNL, at both the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR). Ongoing designer and developer of the full ADARA (Accelerating Data Acquisition, Reduction, and Analysis) software suite for real-time streaming data acquisition, to monitor and collect experimental data and sample environment meta-data into copy-of-record "NeXus" hierarchical HDF5 data files. Significant design/development work on the ADARA "Stream Management Service" (SMS), "Streaming Translation Service" (STS), "Process Variable Streaming Daemon" (PVSD), and "DasMon" Data Acquisition System Monitor Service. Designer and developer of the Sample Activation Calculator (SAC) EPICS IOC software for automatically capturing Sample Irradiation Exposure statistics for Sample Activation calculations. Designer and developer of an EPICS Module and IOC software for automated Web Monitor Beamline Status Process Variable (PV) selection, to enable beamline scientists at SNS and HFIR to interactively customize which of the hundreds of potential Control System PVs to specifically display on the toplevel Web Monitor "Status Page" for each beamline.
October 2021 to April 2023.
Research Staff Scientist, Software Architect and Control System Engineer in the DAQ (Data Acquisition) Development Group, Neutron Instrument Technology (NIT) Section, Neutron Technologies Division (NTD), Neutron Sciences Directorate (NScD). Designing and developing “live” streaming data acquisition software and various beamline control system software for the experimental neutron scattering facilities at ORNL, at both the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR). Ongoing designer and developer of the full ADARA (Accelerating Data Acquisition, Reduction, and Analysis) software suite for real-time streaming data acquisition, to monitor and collect experimental data and sample environment meta-data into copy-of-record “NeXus” hierarchical HDF5 data files. Significant design/development work on the ADARA “Stream Management Service” (SMS), “Streaming Translation Service” (STS), “Process Variable Streaming Daemon” (PVSD), and “DasMon” Data Acquisition System Monitor Service. Designer and developer of the Sample Activation Calculator (SAC) EPICS IOC software for automatically capturing Sample Irradiation Exposure statistics for Sample Activation calculations.
December 2020 to September 2021.
Interim Group Leader for the DAQ (Data Acquisition) Development Group, Neutron Instrument Technology (NIT) Section, Neutron Technologies Division (NTD), Neutron Sciences Directorate (NScD), for the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR). Managing a diverse group of hardware/software engineering staff, and closely collaborating with the tandem “DAQ Integration” Group in overseeing several ongoing projects including: Remote Experiment Access to SNS and HFIR, NOMAD/BL1B Detector Upgrade, VULCAN-X/BL7 Detector Upgrade, Modular Hardware Platform Data Acquisition Electronics, SNAP/BL3 IMAGING/CG1D and VENUS Imaging Detectors/Software, Neutron Spin Echo (NSE)/BL15 EPICS Power Supply Upgrade, Sample Activation Calculator (SAC) Automation Software, and HYSPEC/BL14B Direct-Geometry Spectrometer Planning Tool Effort. Also continuing to support and extend ADARA Streaming Data Acquisition software suite (See below) and various EPICS Beamline Control Software.
September 2010 to December 2020.
Full-time Research Staff and Lead Engineer in the Instrument Data Acquisition and Controls Group (IDAC), Neutron Technologies Division (NTD), Neutron Sciences Directorate (NScD). Designing and developing “live” streaming data acquisition software for the experimental neutron scattering facilities at ORNL, at both the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR). Co-designer and developer of the ADARA (Accelerating Data Acquisition, Reduction, and Analysis) real-time streaming data acquisition software suite, to monitor and collect experimental data including sample environment meta-data and live neutron event data, and then organizing or “translating” the data into copy-of-record “NeXus” hierarchical HDF5 data files suitable for data reduction and scientific analysis. Significant design/development work on the ADARA “Stream Management Service” (SMS), “Streaming Translation Service” (STS), “Process Variable Streaming Daemon” (PVSD), and “DasMon” Data Acquisition System Monitor Service and GUI Client. Also designed and implemented the forerunner to ADARA, the “Live Data Processing” (LDP) system for capturing live data streams from the legacy SNS data acquisition system and producing intermediate data files for live analysis during an experiment. Extended, optimized and maintained the legacy data acquisition system at SNS, including the “HistoTools” data processing software, as well as some diagnostic work on “DcomServer” and “DcomClient.” Co-Developed the original “SNS Data Portal” web interface for accessing and retrieving experimental data files, as well as the “Application Manager” for staging, executing and tracking computational data analysis jobs.
July 1993 to September 2010.
Prior to 2010, worked in the Distributed Computing Group of the Distributed Intelligent Systems Section in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division at ORNL. Performed research on various aspects of parallel and heterogeneous distributed computing, component software frameworks, and visualization, computational steering and application-directed fault tolerance of parallel programs and data, for basic sciences and applied mathematics applications. Member of the original Common Component Architecture (CCA) Forum, a grassroots effort as part of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) “DOE 2000” initiative, to define a standard specification for reusable software components in high-performance scientific computing. Became Co-Principal Investigator of the first CCA research and development project, as part of the U.S. DOE SciDAC (Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing) initiative, in the “Center for Technology for Advanced Scientific Component Software” (TASCS). Collaborated on CCA efforts in Fusion Energy Simulations as part of the “SWIM” project. Was also an active participant in the second CCA SciDAC Center, “Component Technology for Terascale Simulation Software” (CCTTSS), as Lead of the “MxN” Working Group on Parallel Data Redistribution. This MxN work built on my earlier work, Co-developing the “CUMULVS” system (Collaborative, User Migration, User Library for Visualization and Steering) for interactive data and algorithm visualization, collaborative computational steering and user-directed fault tolerance of parallel scientific computer simulations. Worked with the Regional Climate Assessment project to apply CUMULVS for coupling data fields across distinct simulation models; also applied CUMULVS to computational fluid dynamics air flow simulations and finite difference seismic simulations. Worked on the “Harness” project, a next-generation pluggable adaptive distributed computing environment. Co-Developer and primary maintainer of the “Parallel Virtual Machine” (PVM) message-passing system. Developed a graphical user interface for PVM called “XPVM,” which monitors and visualizes the execution of parallel and distributed PVM application programs. Designed and implemented a scalable sparse matrix viewer called “MatView,” for graphically viewing, exploring and analyzing very large sparse matrices. Worked with the National HPCC (High Performance Computing and Communications) Software Exchange (NHSE) on the Parallel Tools Library (PTLIB) project, as editor of the monthly email newsletter “PT Digest,” and have also worked on the Parallel Tools Evaluation (PTE) effort to port existing parallel tools to state-of-the-art computer architectures. Involved in the design of numerous user interfaces for Unix and X Windows applications, as well as web-based HTML forms and CGI script interfaces. Worked on the “Collaborative Management Environment” (CME) project for organizing U.S. DOE Headquarters financial information across the various field offices; developed web-based user interface for coordinating input of user financial queries and processing database accesses. Developed CGI web interface for “DIXIE,” a web-based remote control system for a spectrometer in ORNL’s High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR). Member of the “FaMOUS” team for financial management; co-developed interface to use World-Wide Web for dissemination of concise financial reports. Have explored next-generation program visualization with “IMPROV” (completion of PhD Thesis work), an environment for interactively building custom graphical views of parallel programs.