Summary of my work at KU ACS

I think about my work here as focused in three major areas:

• Web software and content development
• Wide Area Networking support
• Computing and Supercomputing

although my work in these areas actually seems to correspond to the integration of computing with networking that has occured over the past 10 to 15 years, and more recently integrates video, audio, and display media into the mix.

Within these areas I learned and documented new technology, developed and implemented innovative software (list of projects), supervised the development of software and documentation, authored or co-authored 7 grants, directed our statewide higher education network (KanREN), speced and benchmarked high-performance computing systems, constructed special purpose clusters (such as Beowulf systems and Access Grid nodes) using various computer components, supervised the birth and developement of the official KU Web presence, organized and hosted multiday seminars on network construction, network-based applications, and supercomputing, and have taught, lectured, planned, surveyed, collaborated, hired, evaluated, purchased, etc.

Here are some programming examples.

During 2002 I executed 2 videography projects, involving dance and Molecular Biology lectures, on video for archival, and educational purposes. Both resulted in the production of DVDs for the principal performers.

Official job titles here at KU included:

Prior to that time I worked as a research assistant for the Kansas Regional Medical Program and the Health Policy Research Unit of the University of Kansas Medical Center from 1970 to 1976.

I have a B.A. with a double major in:

• Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology
• Psychology

Both degrees are from the University of Kansas. My thesis, "A queuing model of the KU Packet Switch Network," was completed in 1986 and gave me an introduction to networking, largely facilitated by Dave Nordlund and Bill Klein of ACS.

Focus in graduate school on performance evaluation along with training in supercomputing and Wide Area Networking at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) informed my activities in supercomputing support here at KU, as well as my activities in Wide Area Networking.

Prior to graduation with my CS degree, my work in ACS involved

• writing documentation,
• teaching classes in various subjects (dBASEIII, using Fortran, using SPSS, using VMS, networking, SIMSCRIPT, AIexpert, etc.),
• user consulting,
• writing Newsletter articles,
• writing parts of and editing the first booklets for computer use at KU:
  • Batch User's Guide, and the
  • Guide to Interactive Computing,
• developing topics for our summer computer camps, which included writing, along with John Schick, a token-passing network in Basic to help teach networking fundamentals, and
• writing part of and editing Learning Z-Basic on the Zenith Z-100, published by Robert Brady, Inc., 1986.