QUARTERLY June 2024

When we last interviewed you in 2011, you had started a new position with UT’s Center for Intelligent Systems and Machine Learning (CISML). Catch us up on where you have been since then and what you are up to now.

Gosh, a lot has happened since then. I worked as a program manager for CISML for a few years, basically coordinating all aspects of its operation. My 2011 newsletter interview goes into more detail about that if you’re interested.

After CISML, I went to work for UT’s National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS). Though NICS has offices in Claxton intermixed with ICL space, their main office is out at the lab (ORNL). At NICS, I worked as a project manager on a big, multi-institution NSF award called XSEDE, which was a follow-on to TeraGrid. In 2022, as the XSEDE project was winding down, a new administrative position was created in UT’s Min H. Kao Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department (EECS), titled Chief of Staff (CoS). I interviewed for it, they hired me, and it’s the role I have now.

As for what I do as CoS, I have a wide array of responsibilities. Technically, I oversee all administrative aspects of the department – business office, IT group, communications – to name a few. EECS is one of the largest academic units on campus, so there are a lot of moving parts every day. Counting students, faculty (TT and NTT), and staff, there are over 1,400 people in the department. As such, it’s probably easier to describe what I do as traffic and fire control. LOL! I direct administrative traffic and help solve problems.

What did you work on during your time at ICL?

I began at ICL as a research associate, and my first project was called the Repository in a Box, or RIB for short. I’m sure if you do a search for that online, you’ll find a paper or something that describes it.

Since I was at ICL for many years, I was fortunate enough to be promoted within the group a few times. After moving out of the research associate role, I coordinated some administrative efforts related to the group’s involvement in the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP).

My first few years at ICL saw incredible growth within the group (i.e., number of projects and personnel). With that also came growth in the group’s great reputation and exposure world-wide. As a result, we recognized a need to enhance the group’s external communication efforts. Terry Moore (former associate director) and I fostered the creation of an ICL Communications group, whose main responsibilities were to improve the website, edit group produced research papers, create posters and flyers for conferences, and even create this newsletter you are now reading. I headed that new group and served in that role until my departure.

What are some of your favorite memories from your time at ICL?

When I began at ICL, the group was located in Ayres Hall, and six or seven of us shared a single room with a small “cubicle farm.” Putting a bunch of 20-something year old males, charged with being creative and innovative, in a room separated by cubicle walls is often a recipe for disaster. I won’t say there weren’t disasters, but we all got along great. We worked hard but we had fun too. We played pranks on each other, laughed every day (and cried sometimes), and became close.

After we moved from Ayres to Claxton, where we had our own offices, some of us still got together from time to time. We even formed a Dungeons & Dragons group, where we played in the ICL conference room after work. We would order food, have it delivered, and play until 8-9 in the evening. We would even sometimes get together on weekends. That was so much fun, and I remember those days fondly.

Of course, the Friday lunches are memorable, maybe not so much the talks but the free food. The lunches were a nice way to end the week and occasionally learn something new (and interesting) at the same time.

So in summary, I worked with some incredible people at ICL, many whom became lifelong friends. Even though most of them have moved on to other adventures (including retirement) and we don’t communicate much, working with them and becoming friends have to be some of my favorite memories.

What are your interests/hobbies outside of work?

I guess I have four. Besides spending time with my wife and our dog, I like to read (mostly fantasy and historical fiction), workout, blog, and play with fish. For some clarity on that last interest, read my answer to the question below.

Tell us something about yourself that might surprise people.

I have been a freshwater aquarist for nearly 25 years. I keep and breed fish at home. For those of you familiar with tropical, freshwater fish, I breed and raise several species of cichlids. Though there are few thousand cichlid species, only a fraction are available in the hobby. I am partial to Lamprologines, most of which are endemic to Lake Tanganyika, one of the rift lakes of east Africa. As part of that interest, I also maintain a blog about cichlids called The Cichlid Stage. I think it’s the most popular blog (not forum) about cichlids in the world, at least based on online search returns.