Curriculum Vitæ

Personal Information

Ernest N. Mamikonyan
Department of Physics
Drexel University
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Tel.: (215) 895-1544
Fax: (215) 895-5934
E-Mail: ernest [at] physics [dot] drexel [dot] edu

Education
09/2004–present

Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Enrolled into the Ph.D., Physics program.

09/1999–06/2004

Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
B.S., Physics
Thesis: Formation of Intermediate Mass Black Holes in Dense Nuclear Star Clusters

Research Experience
09/2003–present

Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Interests include computational stellar dynamics, in particular, direct N-body simulations of star clusters, and origins of supermassive black holes. Working with Prof. Stephen McMillan to investigate the formation of intermediate mass black holes near the Galactic center.

03/2003–09/2003

Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Under the guidance of Prof. Stephen McMillan and with suggestions from Piet Hut, designed and implemented the StarCluster package. Initially conceived for personal use, it has become part of a larger effort called the Virtual Observatory, an ambitious international initiative to allow observers and theorists to seamlessly share data and analysis techniques.

09/2002–03/2003

Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Research assistant under Prof. Stephen McMillan. Designed and constructed a front-end for the recently purchased GRAPE-6, a special-purpose machine for rapid inverse-square force calculation designed by collaborators at the University of Tokyo.

Teaching Experience
09/2002–05/2003

Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
Speaker for the SpaceLinks program, an effort jointly funded by NASA and NSF to extend science education in elementary and junior high schools.

09/2000–06/2000

Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Tutor for the School of Education in collaboration with the Physics Department.

Related Experience
09/2002–09/2004

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Private consulting for optimization and debugging of algorithms, system administration and security, and user support.

03/2002–09/2002

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Simplified user interaction and administration of several Beowulf machines by implementing multiple layers of software that improve performance and communication between nodes. Designed portable build systems, i.e., configure scripts and Makefiles, for sophisticated, parallel magneto-hydrodynamics codes.

09/2001–03/2002

Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Designed a 96-processor Linux Beowulf cluster with funding from Prof. David Goldberg. The cluster was assembled during the above-mentioned Goddard internship by other students. It is currently in heavy use by the astrophysics group.

09/1999–09/2001

Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Research assistant under Prof. Joan Centrella and later Prof. Michael Vogeley. Responsibilities included production runs at various supercomputer facilities as well as data reduction and analysis investigating rotational instabilities of stars. Also constructed a heterogeneous Linux cluster for use as personal workstations and a platform for parallel applications.

Software
StarCluster

Suite of analysis tools and a C++ Gnuplot API intended to examine simulation as well as observational data. Utilizing the Gnuplot rendering engine, StarCluster interfaces with Starlab to produce a package capable of powerful yet simple and quick analysis and manipulations of large quantities of data.

Psh/Pcp

Scripts that greatly simplify and improve communication between the nodes of Beowulf clusters. Having the capability to operate in parallel as well as serial mode, they satisfy a wide range of applications for users and system administrators alike.

Mon

Monitor of “all useful” system resources for a Linux Beowulf cluster using a low-level socket interface. Mon can use an interactive Ncurses-based, terminal mode for real time monitoring or a batch, text-based mode useful for benchmarking parallel codes. Known users include NASA/GSFC and the Drexel Physics Department.

Over the years, I implemented numerous programs for the Linux OS, low-level system utilities as well as scripts, ranging from a set of uniform front-ends for conversions between popular sound formats to a complete set of custom init scripts for the Red Hat distribution that greatly reduce boot-up time.

References

Available upon request.