Andrew Dolgert curriculum vitae
Research Interests
Stochastic simulation
Design of tools for large-scale scientific collaborations
Education
1999-2002, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, US.
Postdoctoral Associate, Cornell Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, with James Sethna. Designed parallel, object-oriented molecular dynamics software in C++ and Python with Technical University of Denmark (DTU). Studied Ising spin systems.
1993-1999, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, US.
Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics with Alan Dorsey and Michael Fowler. Thesis: Superheated and Dissipative Ginzburg-Landau Superconductors.
1988-1992 B.A. in Math and Physics. Williams College, Williamstown, MA, US.
Job Experience
Sr Project Scientist, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 2021-present
Project scientist in the advanced computing team of the AI division. Working on software testing, encryption, and simulation.
Software Architect, University of Washington, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Seattle, WA, 2016-2021
Lead for a team of four developers working on a nonlinear, hierarchical statistical model for prevalence of disease within a population. This tool will be central to the Institute’s calculation of the global burden of disease. Also software architect for the Institute’s forecast of all causes of disease and death to the year 2100. I guide software development, mentor, and do research into demographic techniques, such as population projection, and statistical simulation at population scale.
Computational Scientist, Cornell Computational Biology Service Unit, Ithaca, NY, 2010-2016
Research Associate in the Analytical Frameworks for Infectious Diseases group (AFIDD). Assembling the code and software tools so that researchers can respond rapidly to new plant and animal diseases in the United States.
Computational Scientist, Cornell Center for Advanced Computing, Ithaca, NY, 2007-2010
Consultant on TeraGrid projects totaling several million core-hours of computing time. Main presenter for workshops to train TeraGrid users of the Texas Advanced Computing Center in visualization, parallel programming, optimization and large data analysis. Estimated and defended to NSF the benchmarks for 80 million dollar supercomputing proposal for the Center. Profiled and optimized the next generation of the main application of CERN CMS in order to improve scalability for more intense beam.
Technical Lead, Cornell Theory Center, Ithaca, NY, 2006-2007
Lead three-person group with a half-million dollar immersive facility called a CAVE. Contracted for major visualization company to advise them on writing immersive scientific environments. Wrote an extension to OpenDX to incorporate immersive display and steering in CAVE environments.
Visualization Specialist, Cornell Theory Center, Ithaca, NY, 2004-2006
Wrote an immersive fracture mechanics viewer to support NSF teaching award. Ported the Visualization Toolkit to the CAVE immersive environment. Wrote and maintained an Open Source port of that toolkit to Microsoft .NET. With the Cornell particle physics laboratory, analyzed user environment for and wrote key parts of an online search interface that became primary discovery interface for the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.
Consultant, Cornell Theory Center, Ithaca, NY, 2002-2004
Optimized fracture mechanics code for Itanium processors with Intel. Developer for special projects to enhance Microsoft’s presence in HPC, including porting key scientific codes to Windows, teaching workshops on parallel computing to academic and industry groups, developing scientific visualization tools in DirectX, and writing demonstrations of new technologies, such as a cycle-scavenging application using .NET to run BLAST.
Selected Projects
Training for Ranger System at Texas Advanced Computing Center, 2006-2011
Developed online and workshop materials focused on distributed parallel computation, data transfer, data management, visualization, and scripting. Wrote dozens of virtual workshops. Always voted best speaker.
Benchmarking Estimates for NSF Supercomputer Proposals, 2007, 2008
Developed benchmark estimates for an NSF Track 2c supercomputing proposal for an eighty-million dollar system. Based performance estimates on future technology roadmaps and benchmarks of current systems and prototype systems at Dell and Intel. Defended benchmarking for NSF review.
Analysis of User Environment for CMS, 2005-2007
Analyzed data management and workflow for the environment of the individual physicist doing research for the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Collaborated with the Elementary Particle Physics computing group to model how real sample analyses would use the computing infrastructure of CMS. The work has informed software development for the international CMS consortium and Cornell has taken a primary role in developing user tools for high energy physics.
Multiscale Modeling of Fracture in Metals, Cornell University, 1999-2002
Led a team of a dozen faculty, research associates and graduate students in designing and writing a new parallel molecular dynamics code in C++ with Python scripting. Primary work was in mentoring software development, optimization of the code, and development of cross-platform user interfaces.
Dissipative Perturbations on Superheated Superconductors, University of Virginia, 1997-8
Analyzed, analytically, the dissipative dynamics of two-dimensional perturbations on simple superconducting metal systems in order to determine limits for breakdown in the superheating field. Verified these results numerically using parallel C++ and Fortran code.
Selected Publications
Andrew Dolgert and Joseph Wagner, "UnitTestDesign.jl: Combinatorial design for unit tests," JuliaCon 2021, Vol 1, Issue 1, pg 78-83, 2021.
Brendan Fries, Carlos A. Guerra, et al., "Measuring the accuracy of gridded human population density surfaces: A case study in Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea," PloS ONE, Vol 16, Issue 8, pg e0248646, 2021.
Kyle Foreman, Neal Marquez, Andrew Dolgert, et al., "Forecasting life expectancy, years of life lost, and all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 250 causes of death: reference and alternative scenarios for 2016-40 for 195 countries and territories," The Lancet, 2018.
Andrew Dolgert, Lawrence Gibbons, Christopher D. Jones, Valentin Kuznetsov, Daniel Riley, Gregory J. Sharp, and Peter Wittich, “Provenance in High-Energy Physics Workflows,” Computing in Science and Engineering, May 2008, Vol. 10, Issue 3, pp. 22–29.
Delgado Peris, A. Fanfani, F. Farina, M. Verlato, P. Elmer, L. Tuura , A. Afaq, Y Guo, S. Kosyakov, L. Luekin, V. Sekhri, A. Dolgert, C. Jones, V. Kuznetsov, D. Riley, J. Rehn, S. Metson, D. Feichtinger, R. Egeland, Z. Toteva and B. Bockelma, “Data Location, Transfer and Bookkeeping in CMS,” Nuclear Physics B (Proc. Suppl.) 177-178 (2008) 279-280.
Dolgert, L Gibbons, V. Kuznetsov, C. D. Jones and D. Riley, “A multi-dimensional view on information retrieval of CMS data,” Journal of Physics: Conference Series 119 Part 7, 072013.
Dolgert, L Gibbons, and V. Kuznetsov, “Rapid web development using AJAX and Python,” Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 119, Part 4, 042011.
Anzar Afaq, Andrew Dolgert, Yuyi Guo, Chris Jones, Sergey Kosyakov, Valentin Kuznetsov, Lee Lueking, Dan Riley, Vijay Sekhri, “The CMS Dataset Bookkeeping Service,” Fermilab Technical Report FERMILAB- CONF-O7-498-CD, presented at Computing in High Energy Physics (CHEP) ’07.
Fanfani et al., “CMS Data and Workflow Management System,” 10th ICATPP Conference on Astroparticle, Particle, Space Physics, Detectors and Medical Applications, Como, Italy (2007).
N. Bailey, T. Cretegny, A. J. Dolgert, C. R. Myers, J. P. Sethna, J. Schitz, J. J. Mortensen, “Digital Material: A Flexible Atomistic Simulation Code,” available at cond-mat/0601236 (2006).
Gerd Heber, Chris Pelkie, Andrew Dolgert, Jim Gray, David Thompson, “Supporting Finite Element Analysis with a Relational Database Backend, Part III: OpenDX Where the Numbers Come Alive,” Microsoft Technical Report MSR-TR-2005-151, November 2005.R. Myers, T. Cretegny, N. P. Bailey, C.-S. Chen, A. J. Dolgert, L. O. Eastgate, E. Iesulauro, A. R. Ingraffea,
M. Rauscher, and J. P. Sethna, “Software methodologies for multiscale descriptions of defects, deformation and fracture,” Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Fracture (2001).
J. Dolgert, T. Blum, A. T. Dorsey, M. Fowler, “Nucleation and Growth of the Superconducting Phase in the Presence of a Current,” Physical Review B 57, 5432, (1998).
J. Dolgert, S. J. Di Bartolo, A. T. Dorsey, “Superheating fields of superconductors: Asymptotic analysis and numerical results,” Physical Review B 53, 5650 (1996).
Awards
Best Paper Award in Workshop on EPIC Architectures and Compiler Technology (ACM MICRO 34) 2001.
Departmental Teaching Assistantship, University of Virginia, 1999. Departmental Fellowship,
University of Virginia, 1994–98 Departmental Teaching Assistantship, University of Virginia, 1992–4.
Teaching Experience
High Performance Computing Workshops, Cornell University, 2002–present
Taught workshops two to six times a year on parallel computing with MPI, basic concepts of parallel computing, visualization introduction, visualization with OpenDX and the Visualization Toolkit. Received highest ratings of all speakers for every workshop.
Teaching Assistant, University of Virginia, 1999
Taught problem sessions for Modern Physics to the majors. Used workshops and interactive techniques to improve problem-solving skills.
Writing Java Applets, University of Virginia, 1997–8
Wrote Fowler’s Physics Applets to support a class for high school physics teachers.
Teaching Assistant, University of Virginia, 1992–94
Taught problem sessions for Premed Physics and laboratories for Premedical and Engineering students. Assisted in rewriting Engineering laboratory manual.
Teaching Assistant, Williams College, 1987–88
Undergraduate teaching assistant to laboratory accompanying Junior year Quantum Mechanics.