SCHOOL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE, Carnegie Mellon

In industry, large emphasis is often put on product development that must be done with ever more efficiency and faster turnaround times. In academia, government grants and research contracts allow individuals to focus on researching important future ideas and concepts. Very few places are like Sandia National Labs where you get to work on both research and development and get to see the benefit of your research or get to do some research while doing product development. This talk shares a few examples of research that is aided by following development principles and practices and where product development is aided by mixing in some research.

Jay Brotz is a Systems Engineer and has been at Sandia National Laboratories for six years. He graduated from CMU with an MS in ECE. He currently designs radiation detection systems for Department of Energy nuclear nonproliferation program. Prior to that, Jay worked on a number of other complex systems involving hardware and software, and interdisciplinary teams. Jay started his career researching microsystems.

Presentation Note: The author of the presentation is Dr. David White

David R. White received his PhD degree in Civil Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003; his MS and BS degrees in Civil Engineering from Brigham Young University in 1996 and 1995. He has been at Sandia National Labs for over 14 years. As a member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, his research was focused on automating the finite element hexahedral mesh generation process. He led the CUBIT Mesh Generation Toolkit project for two years. While on the Doctorial Studies Program for Sandia at CMU, he researched methods for automating the meshing process, a key research area for making modeling and simulation faster and more user friendly. He then served as the manager for the Data Analysis and Visualization department at Sandia. The department performed research that resulted in applications in: scientific modeling and simulation, image analysis, business and patent information visualization, bio-informatics visualization, and homeland security applications. He then became the Senior Manager for the Computer Support Services and Technologies group and had responsibilities for Sandia’s integrated desktop support, supporting over 20,000 desktop computers and devices for the Labs. He currently is the Senior Manager for the Science and Engineering Information Systems group that develops production information systems and other applications through full life-cycle software engineering practices, researches informatics technologies, and performs computer security assessments and related research for Sandia’s customers.

<< Back