Leesa Brieger

10628 Porto Ct, San Diego, CA 92124

home: (858) 560-0328, work: (858) 534-6264, email: leesa.brieger@gmail.com

 

Profile           

With the background of computational scientist, I have carried out applications development in scientific research labs in Europe and the United States, designing and implementing algorithms for very large-scale distributed simulations running on high performance architectures.  Through many international and cross-disciplinary experiences, I have acquired a strong ability to bridge cultural and professional differences.  This has benefited me personally and also professionally, particularly when I have served as liaison between academia and industry, adapting theory and research to development and production.  With my technical and analytical skills, my creativity and flexibility, and my strong communication skills, including a command of French, Italian and English, I am well suited for a wide-reaching scientific role, bringing theory and analysis to bear on real-world applications.

 

U.S. citizen.

 

Experience Summary

Developed production code for oil and gas prospecting for the Italian oil industry, bringing HPC expertise to exploration geophysicists. Designed and implemented numerical models and high performance simulations for fluid flow in porous media (in hydrology and materials science), seismic imaging (oil exploration), electrical activity in an excitable medium (cardiology).  Optimized numerical methods for parallel computing environments on distributed- and shared-memory machines: finite elements with algebraic domain decomposition, parallel multigrid preconditioners for the conjugate gradient method, spectral methods, lattice gases. Developed workflow software to transform on-demand astronomical mosaicking services into a very large-scale production package.  Testing and troubleshooting of new and experimental systems (IBM Power4, GPFS parallel file system, TeraGrid IA64 clusters, grid services, etc). Extensive support for American computational scientists as NPACI consultant, including giving tutorials and workshops on grid computing. Currently handling data management and preservation environments for very large distributed data sets. 

 

F90, C, MPI, OpenMP, HPF, MPI I/O, VMI, MPICH-G2, Globus, Condor, SRB, Perl, Python, MYMPI, AWK.

 

 

 

Detailed Work History

 San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), Univ of California, San Diego

      (SRB, Scientific Applications, Grid Applications, and Parallel Tools groups)

 

Programmer Analyst  Nov 2000 – Nov 2001, July 2002 – currently

·        Responsible for data management (archival, data processing pipelines, data preservation) in projects of climatology, cosmology, and astronomy in a collaboration between UCSD, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Lawrence Livermore National Lab and SDSC.

·        Responsible for SDSC collaboration with NASA’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech on the National Virtual Observatory project: developed workflow software to transform on-demand astronomical mosaicking services into a very large-scale production package, ported Montage astronomical mosaicking codes to Power4 and IA64, parallelized and optimized code, managed the production runs for mosaicking the 8 TeraByte Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) archive; prepared SDSC’s SuperComputing 2002 NVO/Montage demo (presented by Reagan Moore).

·        Adapted grid services for applications: Globus, Condor, APST, portal-based tools and middleware, Storage Resource Broker (SRB), cross-site MPI runs between TeraGrid sites using VMI and MPICH-G2.

·        Systems support: acceptance testing for DataStar (IBM Power4), troubleshooting of systems and grid services, application testing on DataStar and TeraGrid IA64 cluster

·        Developed and delivered training sessions and tutorials

o       Scientific Python workshop, 2005: presentation of MYMPI for workflow management for Montage project, efficiently alternating between two levels of parallelism in a batch job

o       TeraGrid Tutorial, SuperComputing 2004: SRB, DB2, globus, condor

o       UC Irvine Workshop, 2004 - Parallel Computing and Grid Services

o       NPACI All Hands Meeting, 2003 – Tutorial on Grid Services (globus)

o       NPACI Summer Training Institute, 2003 – Grid Perspectives

·        Consultant for NSF-funded computational scientists nationwide on SDSC resources

 

Acting NPACI Project Manager  Nov 2001- June 2002

Invited by SDSC directors to step in as interim Project Manager for the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) when NPACI was the main funding source of SDSC. Oversaw the several-month transition period between NPACI Executive Directors and kept operations going smoothly. 

Directed a group of three other staff members dedicated to administrative support of the NPACI project.

 

 

Document and Proposal Writing, SDSC

·        Invited contributor to the User Services section of the core CyberInfrastructure proposal, submitted by SDSC to the National Science Foundation for the 3-year funding extension of the NPACI program, 2005 – 2007.  Funded.

·        Two internal SDSC Innovation Proposals, both portal projects: one a User Services portal for aid in troubleshooting grid services, the other a Window on the Grid project to educate users about (grid) resources at SDSC.  One and a half years later SDSC User Services division is setting up portals as described in my proposals.

·        Application Portability proposal for a portable Fortran library and SPMD Collective Communication Module proposal, submitted by Tim Kaiser and the Parallel Tools group to the Department of Defense, 2001.  Both funded by DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) Programming Environment and Training (PET) activities through Mississippi State University under the terms of Contract No. N62306-01-D-7110.

·        SDSC User Services internal report on user requirements, based on the analysis of user interviews, 2001.

 

 

 

Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia (CRS4), Cagliari/Pula, Italy     

(All work conducted in Italian.)                                 

          

Senior Researcher, Geophysics Area 1997 - 2000

·        ENI Exploration and Production Division (AGIP) Project: Wrote the computational kernel to an industrial 3D wave propagation seismic imaging code, giving ENI a competitive edge in oil exploration. Brought HPC expertise to exploration geophysicists, and contributed in an important way to the introduction of parallel and high performance computing technology to ENI. Collaborated with ENI geophysicists to optimize codes for the SGI shared-memory Origin 2000. 

·        Parallel Computer Project: Co-responsible for evaluation and choice of technology to meet CRS4 computing needs (and budget); our recommendation was the basis for the purchase of an IBM SP3 at CRS4.

 

Senior Researcher and Consultant, Environmental Modeling Area 1993 - 1997

·        Hydrology and Water Management Project: parallelization and optimization of finite element flow and transport models using algebraic domain decomposition to map the nonlinear computational problem onto distributed-memory architectures.

·        Director to junior researcher on parallel linear solvers: study of parallel preconditioners for conjugate gradient solvers of sparse systems arising from finite element applications; development and implementation (using F90 with MPI) of a parallel multigrid preconditioner for the conjugate gradient method.

·        Director of master’s thesis: directed two visiting student researchers from ENSAM, Bordeaux, France on the equivalent of a master's thesis, comparing efficiency of conjugate gradient preconditioners, according to implementation and underlying parallel architecture.

 

 

 

Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL),  Lausanne, Switzerland

                       (All work conducted in French.)

 

Staff Scientist, Institut de machines hydrauliques et de mécaniques des fluides, 1991 - 1992

Developed and implemented lattice gas models as parallel algorithms for solving equations of diffusion with reaction and diffusion with convection.

 

Assistante, Département de Mathématiques, 1987 - 1990

     Held the discussion sections for undergraduate numerical analysis course; continued lattice gas research begun in the materials science department.

 

Research Assistant, Département de Matériaux, 1984 - 1988

Developed numerical simulations of the corrosion of reinforced concrete by carbonation: finite element and lattice gas models.  Presentations of the work included to mechanical engineers at the Ecole des Ponts et Chausées, Paris.

 

 

 

Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico

Summer visitor, Center for Non-Linear Studies (CNLS), Summer 1990

Pursued research on cellular automata and lattice gas models

 

 

 

Cardiovascular Research & Training Institute, Univ of Utah, Salt Lake City

Research Assistant 1982 - 1983

Provided scientific programming as required in the cardiac research lab: graphics, software tools for diagnostics on ECG data and for computer interface to laboratory equipment.  Collaborated with Dr. James P. Keener, Dept. of Math, Univ. of Utah, on simulations of coupled electrical oscillators, as a model of electrical activity in heart tissue.

 

 

 

Department of Mathematics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City

Teaching Fellow 1979 - 1982

Taught calculus and Fortran77, assistant for graduate level numerical analysis courses.

 

 

 

Education

·        M.A., Applied mathematics: numerical analysis, mathematical modeling, 1982 University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.

·        A.B., Mathematics, 1977, University of California, Berkeley, California.



Publications list and references available on request.