Life Update
I am not really sure where to post this, so I have decided that inSCIght is as good a place as any.
Due to our current funding round coming up during the sequester, the Flash Center is currently scaling back to focus on its core mission. So my job as a Research Scientist at the University of Chicago will eventually go away. I was not laid off today nor would I have been tomorrow. I would have likely been able to remain at the Flash Center for up to another year.
However, I like being proactive in these situations and in being proactive new opportunities present themselves. As of yesterday, I am now an Assistant Visiting Scientist in the Engineering Physics department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In many ways this is a return to Computational Nuclear Engineering and Fuel Cycle research. But don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed my time researching in Plasma Physics and High-Energy Density Physics. Crescat scientia, vita excolatur!
From here on I’ll be working with the research groups of Dr. Paul Wilson. Paul is very supportive of open source scientific computing and this software ecosystem as part of his critical research path. By hiring me, relevant projects — namely Cyclus and PyNE — now become my full time job. Other projects that I contribute to — PyTables, xdress, and other minutia around the SciPy ecosystem — play a synergistic role with my main duties and I am free to continue helping with. Furthermore, after checking with the rest of the board that there were no unforeseen conflicts of interest, I will remain the treasurer and a board member for NumFOCUS. I am very happy about this since NumFOCUS has been doing some really great things lately!
Lastly, for some family health related reasons, the position that I have taken at UW is 3/4 remote — ie 1 week / month I will physically be in Madison. Starting August 1, I will be moving out of Chicago begin splitting my time between Santa Barbara, Madison, and Austin.
If you have any questions for me, or just want to chat, don’t hesitate to contact me and ask.
Gloria perpetua!
Filed under: Info
