Coding

I’m very interested in turning mathematical models into working code and evaluating the output. From my earliest project modeling a classical hydrogen atom in a circularly-polarized electric field to my most recent work investigating quantum Monte Carlo simulation of electrons in platinum molecules, I want to see what we can calculate and understand what it means.

The biggest coding project I have worked on was implementing interfaces in the CHAMP quantum Monte Carlo code to various spline libraries. It was a challenge for me since I had never coded in FORTRAN before. In the process, I wrote my first FORTRAN module from scratch.

I’ve also enjoyed working with the Quantum ESPRESSO package. A few years back I added two new exchange-correlation functionals to its native exchange-correlation functional library and a subroutine to calculate the vibrational contributions to the dielectric permittivity of the material to its phonon post-processing code, dynmat.

Running across multiple architectural platforms for my work has led me to develop numerous Bash scripts to process data. More recently, I collaborated with a beginning coder to add new functionality to the Python-based analysis tool, qmca, developed for the QMCPACK quantum Monte Carlo code.

My work as a university professor has given me opportunities to work with students of varying levels on developing code for both educational and practical purposes. One such project, pysky, helps plan observatory event viewing targets. Other endeavors are visible on my github page.