Paul Marshall Questionnaire

1. your name:

Paul Marshall

2. the intended topic area for your PhD:

The systems aspect of High Performance Computing, possibly grid computing.

3. most important reason for you personally to get a PhD:

A Ph.D. enables me to do cutting edge research in high performance computing.

4. name three computer scientist which YOU consider most important for the field and what you consider their contribution
4.1. George Boole - Boolean algebra
4.2. John von Neumann - von Neumann architecture
4.3. Dennis Ritchie - C and UNIX (along with Ken Thompson)

5. name the three most important, professionally relevant books which you have read
5.1. Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
5.2. C Programming Language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie
5.3. Code Complete by Steve McConnell

6. assuming you will collaborate with researchers and explore ideas outside of CS during your PhD studies — which domains are the most likely candidates for this effort
6.1. Atmospheric Science
6.2. Physics
6.3. Computer Engineering

7. briefly characterize your own digital literacy:
7.1. which programming language do you know (mention them in an order of decreasing familiarity)

C
C++
C#
Python
Java

7.2. describe the top three projects (problem, programming language used, for what) which you have done in the past

For a large portion of undergrad I worked on a research project to develop a suite of software to calculate seasonality metrics on NDVI satellite images for NASA, USGS, and NOAA scientists at the National Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science. I developed parallel algorithms for the metrics suite and a solution to monitor the process over a network. The project used (almost exclusively) C.

After graduation I continued to work at my school in the ITS department developing programs for a web-based portal, these web apps were primarily developed in C# and ASP.NET, tying into an Informix database.

For a summer during undergrad I worked as a developer at GeoDigm Corporation on a variety of projects. Particularly the development of a Statistical Process Control program to monitor their ICON(tm) crown process. I also developed an application to track GeoDigm’s emodel(tm) production work flow in an SQL database. Lastly I assisted in porting their main emodel(tm) software from Windows to OS X, which was mainly developed in C++ using Qt.

7.3. which are the top three applications that you are familiar with (e.g. Photoshop, Canvas, Dreamweaver, iMovie, ….)?

I suppose the applications which I am most familiar with are those I use the most (therefore, not terribly related to HPC):
Firefox :-)
iTunes
Visual Studio and VIM

8. List your three favorite topics that you would like to see discussed in this course!
8.1. General outline of the Ph.D. program and it's requirements
8.2. Best means/methods/resources to go about doing research in industry or at another school's lab during the Ph.D. years
8.3. How to get more funding :-)

Last modified 30 August 2007 at 4:22 pm by paul.marshall