Software in Science
Summary
Meet Howard Deshong, Schmidt Scholar, recent graduate of Harvey Mudd College, and happy resident in Assistant Professor of Physics Katerina Chatziioannous lab, which analyzes data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). BayesWave has been assembled over the past 10 years, almost entirely by LIGO scientists who are, of course, extremely familiar with how the detectors work, the potential sources of extraneous noise, and which patterns of gravitational waves indicate particular types of cosmic events. And so she applied to the Schmidt Academy, hoping to bring on a software engineer who could "clean up the baseline stuff"— translating BayesWave from C, a programming language first developed in the 1970s, to C++, its successor—and enabling LIGO scientists to meet the needs of upcoming observations. With a projected 12 Schmidt Scholars joining the original four in 2020, Gurnis brought on Dave Rumph (BS 80), who had a prior career as software engineer at Xeroxs Palo Alto Research Center, where he helped develop the first color laser-printer prototype, among other achievements. When recruiting for the Schmidt Academy, Breeden tells students, "If you make a tweak to Kindle software that rolls out to 10 million customers, you have a long lever that affects a ton of people a tiny amount.