Big Computers? Hells Yeah!

I became interested in my general research area as an undergrad, after reading an article on parallel computers. Soon, I was writing a statement of purpose (which is quite laughable when I re-read it now, but I guess the someone liked it), and started grad school.

And the rest is history. Well, not really. I am still in grad school, but it is interesting to look at the years past and see how my interests took shape. The same thing is still interesting: large. blinking. machines. Performing computation in a smart way to do unprecedented science. I don't really care what science - physics, climate, medical research, all are important and all fascinating. So I know I've chosen my trade well - as a computer scientist, I get to have my fingers in any of them!

Much of my work entails understanding what the scientists are trying to do, and using my computer science expertise to get their codes to run efficiently on the greatest and latest machines (and prepare for the not-yet-existent machines). So while my skill set is all things computer science (hardware, software, algorithms, compilers, ...), an ability to quickly pick up a rudimentary understanding and vocabulary in other fields is key, and can be a big challenge while always keeping me on my toes (in a good way!). I was always one of those people who wished she could just squeeze in another physics/chemistry/biology class into her curriculum full of computer science and math classes. And while the exposure to sciences I have now is much less systematic and much more self-driven and sporadic, it satisfies my curiosity while allowing me to further develop my bread-and-butter, which is full of fascinating research problems on its own.

I like automating things, so writing tools to pinpoint and correct problems otherwise only fixable by a human is a win-win: I don't have to manually solve the same or similar problem again (which frees up my time to do something new), and the problem is frequently solved better by a never-tired-or-under-slept computer. I like that, at least in theory, when my tools are hard at work, I can get some sleep ;)


P.S. Check out the other posts in the Theory/Computation Carnival!