Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab
Project: Socioeconomics of Power Outages and Heatwaves
Where did you grow up?
After moving around a lot as a child, my family settled in Knoxville, TN. I have spent most of my life here and love the area.
What’s your field of study and how did you get into that field?
I studied Computer Science and Cybersecurity at the University of Tennessee – Knoxville. I have always been interested in computers and technology in general, but I was actually an adjuster for a major insurance carrier for around 10 years before I realized I would never be fulfilled in that field of work. I quit my job and went back to school at age 30. I did an internship at ORNL my sophomore year where I helped develop automation software for radar system parameters, started working in my current role as an HPC Engineer in the User Assistance group at the OLCF my junior year as a subcontractor, and was hired on officially in the same role after graduation earlier this year.
What fascinates you about HPC?
My introduction to HPC came from coursework at the University of Tennessee where we learned parallel computing concepts and techniques. I was really amazed by the scope and scale of problems that can only be tackled using these huge complex systems. Observing the improvements in the various simulations and computations completed on modern HPC systems with those from older systems really emphasizes the importance of HPC in understanding and solving very large problems.
What’s your current title and what do you do?
I am an HPC Engineer in the User Assistance group at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at ORNL. I help users with a wide variety of questions or problems they may run into when using OLCF systems. We also develop and maintain the user documentation for our systems and assist with various training and outreach events. In addition to the more traditional user assistance tasks, I also act as a liaison for users who are interested in using our Kubernetes cluster for various workflows, services, and applications.
What energy justice topic is most important to you and why?
I am interested in discovering and exploring ways we can ensure equality of energy access across all socio-economic and cultural populations and how technology can help us evaluate and solve such a large problem.