Bronco Spotlight: Muaaz Awan
Ph.D. in computer science, 2019
Post Doc Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The NERSC (National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center) division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is one of the largest facilitators of super computing facilities to the scientists. It also hosts one of the fastest super computers in the world, known as Cori. My job is to help the science teams understand the capabilities of the supercomputers hosted at NERSC and help them in running their codes on these supercomputers. A large part of my time is spent on understanding these codes and redesigning them so that they can fully exploit the power of these massive machines.
What is the most rewarding and the most challenging part of your job?
The codes I work with are helping leading scientific discovery. To know that I am playing a part in pushing the limits of scientific understanding of multiple fields is the most rewarding part of my job. Failure is a part of scientific research, and when I am faced with a failure after hours of effort, that can be a challenge to handle.
What activities, resources, or people helped you prepare for your career?
Western's Computer Science Department has a lot of very capable faculty members, all of whom helped me understand my interest and pave a way for my career in parallel computing. In particular, my PhD advisor Dr. Fahad Saeed was the biggest influence and I owe him greatly for all my recent achievements. I was actively involved in the research being carried out at Dr. Saeed's lab. I believe that helped me greatly in developing my skills.