< todo!(); - Write out portfolio - Check out my blog while I work! >
About Me -
< todo!(); - Write out about me section - Check out my blog while I work! >
Skills -
< todo!(); - Write out explanation of skills - Check out my blog while I work! >
Projects -
Hawkeye
I’ve done a large amount of work for NIU’s Center for Research Computing and Data (CRCD), primarily with their flagship supercomputer - Metis.
There are hundreds of active users on this cluster, and to facilitate fair use, Metis employs Altair’s PBS Professional - a highly robust job scheduling system.
This system can be complicated, and users may not necessarily know how their jobs are using resources. As a result, proper tooling for evaluating the performance and runtimes of jobs is required!
Hawkeye is a monolithic architecture webapp designed for quickly viewing, diagnosing, and interpreting the jobs running on the Metis supercomputing cluster. Linked below is an example of the homepage, when unauthenticated:
This homepage lets you see the resources available, jobs which are queued or running, and allows you to sort and parse through the jobs easily. Additionally, each job is linked to a detailed stats page, which does requires authentication:
Users can view stats-over-time:
Users also have the ability to view all of their jobs in one place. They can easily filter by time and sort by status, runtime, usage, or any other available statistics:
Lastly, advanced users have the ability to query the entire database of jobs to search by any person, group, or other identifier:
This application was developed entirely in pure Rust with a monolithic architecture, meaning there is no split between backend/frontend.
As a result, results are rendered in-place - no waiting on delayed API calls for the page to load! HTML is rendered serverside (SSR), leading to secure and blazingly fast response times. These fast load times are especially important considering how some queries can return hundreds or even thousands of jobs. With a typical approach - many slower connections would time out or look disorienting during loading.
The application was built on the Tokio runtime for async, the Axum framework for web routing, and rusqlite for the database.
You can view this project live at https://hslab.niu.edu/batchmon!
Home HA Compute Cluster and Whole-Home AV + Home Theater Systems
In my free time, I maintain an extremely stateful highly-available set of servers, built on the NixOS operating system. I use these servers to host lots of cool stuff that I want always online, without having to pay for expensive cloud systems - and letting me experiment without fear!
My personal favorite is the Servarr stack, which I use to automate my media pipelines and stream 4k content over LAN to all televisions in my household, for free. Some screenshots of the user interface and my library:
There’s a large mix of different hardware, but NixOS makes driver installation, workload migration, and statefulness an absolute cinch. Currently, the machines that drive my home servers are:
- 4 Dell Optiplex 5070 (SFF)
- Custom - (i5-9700, NVIDIA 1060 3GB, 64GB DDR4)
- Custom - (i5-13000KF, AMD 6700XT, 64GB DDR4)
All machines are entirely impermanent - that is, the system wipes at boot. As such, every bit of state required for each workload is highly defined, letting me quickly spin up virtual/physical machines and recreate an entire machine with ease. If you’re interested in why I enjoy this approach, I highly recommend you read my article at the end.
Additionally, I designed and built two home theater systems for my home. I’m a huge AV geek, and wanted to create a full experience for my family that provides the true essences of film and music with ease. To do so, I used proven audio technologies such as Bowers & Wilkins, Yamaha, and Sonos.
This includes a dedicated theater in our game room, and another setup in our living room. On top of this, because our home has a large network of IoT devices, I had to carefully ensure that network traffic was containerized to prioritize workstations, televisions, and other critical devices.
I’m very proud of the cable management!
Requiem
< todo!(); - Write out explanation of Requiem - Check out my blog while I work! >
Research -
iGAIT
I’m the lead backend and HPC developer for the iGAIT team, which is a multi-disciplinary team at NIU focused on changing the lives of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Our team creates highly effective screening tools with computer vision and machine learning in the hopes of curbing the issues with late diagnosis in the US - and worldwide.
The iGAIT screening tool uses OpenPose to create a pose estimation. From there, our backend parameterizes various joint angles, which are then used to create a highly accurate ASD prediction!
I built the backend using Rust, Nix, and Docker + Apptainer. From this project, I’ve learned many unique skills - such as NVIDIA cuDNN, navigating HPC systems, Altair’s PBS Professional, RHEL8, and more. I’m very proud to be part of such an amazing team that pushes my technical abilities daily.
Curve Straightening
< todo!(); - Write out explanation of straightening research - Check out my blog while I work! >
Honors and Awards -
Illinois VEX Robotics State Champion ‘23
Alongside 4 other BHS students, our team 355V “Orange Mambas” qualified for and won the 2023 Illinois VEX State Championship!
Because of our performance, our team qualified for the VEX Robotics World Championship 2023 in Dallas, Texas. 800 teams from 40 countries qualified, and among those, the Orange Mambas were semifinalists - solidifying our team as a top 100 team globally.
Huskie Trek Talk $15,000 Award
The iGAIT research team presented the iGAIT Autism Screening App at the annual NIU Huskie Trek Talks, and recieved first place alongside the largest grant of $15,000.
Other Awards -
Illinois State Scholar
An award highlighting the top graduating students, issued by ISAC.
ICTM Two-Person Presentation First Place
Issued by the ICTM for recieving first place at the annual two-person group mathematics no-prep problem-solving presentation challenge.
Dean’s List - Northern Illinois University
The Dean’s List honors distinguished students with a 3.75 or higher GPA at NIU, a status I have maintained throughout my time at NIU.