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Computational Research Consulting with RISE
RISE Team Members
Carrie Brown
- Client Support Lead
Email: carrie.brown@psu.edu
Phone: 814-867-1467
Biography: Carrie holds a master's degree in Statistics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Building upon an educational and research background in bioinformatics, she has expertise in facilitating computational research. She has assisted researchers in identifying appropriate computational solutions and leveraging institutional, commercial, and national resources such as XSEDE and the Open Science Grid. She also has extensive experience in developing and delivering computational training and works closely with the Carpentries as a certified Instructor and Instructor Trainer.
Clayton Colson
- Immersive Experiences Engineer, RISE (Research Innovation with Scientists and Engineers) Team
Email: cec5550@psu.edu
Specialty: Immersive Experiences
Biography: Clayton holds a bachelor’s degree in Energy Engineering from Penn State University. He has a background developing automation software for the manufacturing industry, and also has experience performing 2D data visualizations using live production floor data. Clayton is passionate about designing and implementing sustainable robotic process automation systems.
Patrick Dudas
- R&D Engineer, RISE (Research Innovation with Scientists and Engineers) Visualization Team Lead
- Associate Director, Center for Immersive Experiences
- ICDS Associate
Office: 222A Computer Building
Email: pmd19@psu.edu
Specialty: Data Visualization
Biography: Patrick (he/him) holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in Information Science. He has an eclectic background and has collaborated with researchers in biology, meteorology, business, infectious diseases, political science, veterinary and biomedical sciences, entomology, food science, chemistry, physics, engineering, information science, and clinical pharmacology. He is passionate about creating data visualizations and storytelling methods to help researchers understand their underlining data and make their results more accessible. Also, he is interested in assisting researchers in enhancing their own visual, computational, and data fluency by developing tools and provide introductory and advanced workshops.
Dave McLaughlin
Email: dcm20@psu.edu
Specialty: Data Visualization
Biography: Dave holds a master’s degree in Geographic Information Systems from Penn State University. Building on extensive experience in web design and development, his graduate work focused on communicating climate change impacts through interactive web and augmented reality cartography. He specializes in crafting data visualizations for a range of scenarios and applications.
Diego Menéndez
- Research Software Engineer, RISE (Research Innovation with Scientists and Engineers) Team
Office: 222E Computer Building
Email: dmenendez@psu.edu
Phone: 814-863-9447
Specialty: Parallelization
Biography: Diego holds a master’s degree in Software Engineering and specializes in refactoring research codes using parallelism as the driver for performance. He has delivered maintainable software for projects in different disciplines including the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. In his role of Campus Champion for Penn State, he facilitates access to XSEDE resources across the nation.
Daniel Nissley
- RISE Bioinformatician/Computational Biologist
Office: Computer Building, University Park
Email: dan182@psu.edu
Jeff Nucciarone
Office: 214G Computer Building
Email: nucci@psu.edu
Phone: 814-865-9655
Specialty: Parallelization
Biography: Jeff holds a master’s degree in Meteorology from Penn State University. He has extensive experience in high-performance computing and previously supported the business, chemistry, chemical engineering, geosciences, materials science, and meteorology communities. His experience covers the parallelization and optimization of codes. Along with Diego Menéndez in the role of Campus Champion for Penn State, he facilitates access to XSEDE resources across the nation.
Daniel Otchere
Office: 222D Computer Building
Email: dao5333@psu.edu
Specialties: AI/ML, Reservoir Engineering, Geoscience
Biography: Daniel holds a Ph.D. in Petroleum Engineering from Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Malaysia. His expertise includes geoscience, petroleum engineering, and artificial intelligence. He specializes in leveraging advanced computational techniques and machine learning to tackle complex challenges in the energy and environmental sectors. He has experience in reservoir simulation, geophysical processing, fiber optic technology in subsurface monitoring, geothermal energy, and geologic storage.
Justin Petucci
Office: 225A Computer Building
Email: jmp579@psu.edu
Phone: 814-867-6091
Specialty: Computational Physics
Biography: Justin holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Denver. His area of expertise is in computational solid state and surface physics where he utilizes atomistic simulation methods such as molecular dynamics (MD), molecular statics (MS), equilibrium and kinetic Markov chain Monte Carlo (MC, MCMC, GCMC, KMC), and density functional theory (DFT) to probe material properties and processes. He also has experience applying machine learning (ML) methods to help guide the creation of biophysical models and to analyze electronic health record (EHR) data.
Danying Shao
Department: Advanced Technical Services
Office: 214E Computer Building
Email: dus73@psu.edu
Phone: 814-865-2309
Specialty: Computational Biology
Biography: Danying holds a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California, San Diego, and a B.S. in Physics from Peking University. She specializes in computational biology, data science, and web applications. She has worked on a wide range of projects, including cell signaling, cell motility, next-generation sequencing pipelines, labor management, and institutional research.
Ron Tapia
Office: 214G Computer Building
Email: rdt12@psu.edu
Specialties: Containerization, Simulation, Cloud Computing
Biography: Ron holds a master’s degree in Mathematics and specializes in software development and programming in a Unix environment, containerization, and cloud computing. Ron has extensive experience in programming and debugging simulations with large numbers of concurrent threads and processes. He is proficient in several programming languages; Docker, Singularity, and Kubernetes; Terraform; and Kafka and influxdb.