Bio
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 37830-6485 [July 1993 to present.]
April 2023 to present. 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.