Research Goals
I am a computational physicist who specializes in planetary science. My passions are developing simulations for science teachers as well as simulations and other tools that would help other scientists do their science better.
I see myself as a bridge between computer scientists and "natural" scientists (physicists, planetary scientists, astronomers). Unlike most computer scientists, I study physics and planetary science and think like a natural scientist. Unlike most natural scientists, I have also studied and taught computer science, so I am famialar with the details of algorithms, data structures, parallelization, and high performance computing in general.
"If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a movie is worth a thousand pictures, a simulation is worth a thousand movies, and a framework is worth a thousand simulations."
I seek to build tools for scientists and/or simulation frameworks which can be extended by myself or others. These simulations can be run to test scientific hypotheses and to generate data for educational purposes such as visualization.
Specialties
Fluid dynamics
Fluid dynamics is one of my favorite topics because it involves several different equations and dimensionless parameters. It is interesting to me because some interactions are so complex as to be difficult to envision what actually happens without using a simulation. I enjoy solve the partial differential equations on fixed grids using finite-difference approximations of derivatives.
Magnetohydrodynamics
Magnetohydrodynamics, particularly thermospheric physics, is one of my favorite topics, for the same reasons as fluid dynamics, but with the added excitement of electromagnetism.
High Performance Computing
The bigger the simulation, the more exciting it is! I particularly enjoy parallelizing scientific simulations, giving thought to inter-process communication and I/O overhead.