Hi all. Is this thing still on?? It’s been over 5 years since my last update, which has to be some kind of record. There have been lots of changes since my last post, including the addition of our lovely daughter Marissa, who turns 4 very soon! In the previous entry, I discussed the fact that Sydney was 4 (she’s now 9). How time flies…
Last year, Adrienne and I celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary by revisiting our honeymoon destination: beautiful Maui, Hawaii! It was a spectacular trip and one we’ll remember for years to come. Hawaii is one of our favorite places to visit, and it’s truly a paradise on earth.
In career news, I’ve left academia since my last post and have rejoined industry. I’ve served in leadership roles in Data Science over the past ~4 years, previously on an oil and gas Analytics team. I’m fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn and grow my knowledge and skills in machine learning, technology, and leadership. Currently, I lead a Data Science team at Verinovum, a healthcare data curation startup.
That’s enough for now and it’s late! See you in another 2-5 years 😉
It’s been an interesting couple of years. Sydney is now 4 years old and in preschool, keeping us busy, amused, and entertained!
I’ve enjoyed doing a bit of traveling and presenting my research this past fall at data science, HPC and medical informatics conferences: first was at ACM Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) in New York in August, second at the Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium in Norman, and more recently at the American Medical Informatics Assocation (AMIA) 2014 Symposium in Washington, D.C in November. The KDD paper was an overview of the software tools, processes, and general environment used in clinical analytics at OU School of Community Medicine. At AMIA and the Supercomputing Symposium I discussed my analysis and research in medication adherence of Sooner Health Access Network patients. I’m really enjoying my data science work in health and clinical data analysis.
Speaking of traveling, our family spent Thanksgiving this year in Savannah, Georgia with the LeSages. We drove with the Elfrinks from Tulsa, so had quite a journey there and back (~17 hour drive). Savannah was an interesting city with a lot of character and southern charm, and it was great to see and spend time with all of Adrienne’s extended family in Savannah. With a grand history stretching back to 1733, it makes Oklahoma seem quite young in comparison. We all enjoyed our time there and look forward to seeing it again some day.
Lastly and more recently, we had a great time at Christmas in Spiro with my family and had the rare opportunity to spend several days there. Sydney had fun playing with her cousins and we all enjoyed celebrating Christmas there. Now the new year is almost upon us, so here’s to a superb 2015!
Actually, it’s been slightly over 2 years, but who’s counting? Here are some quick milestones:
- Sydney is a gregarious 2 year old (26 months) and continues to bring joy and humor to our lives
- I have 2 new nieces, both born late this year:
- Greenley (b. Oct 16) is April’s third child
- Caroline (b. December 26) is Nathan’s second
- I completed my doctoral research and studies at TU (in May 2012) and now have a PhD in Computer Science, Bioinformatics focus
- I’ve accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Research at the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine, and have been working as Data Scientist at MyHealth Access Network
So in honor of the passage of 2 years since my last post, I thought I’d add a quick update on some changes:
- I’m now a proud father of a baby girl, Sydney, who was born on Oct 12 of this year
- I have 2 new nephews and a niece (in order by birth: Aiden, Alex, and Babe), in addition to Davis
- I’ve returned to school at the University of Tulsa to pursue my PhD in Computer Science
- As part of my doctoral studies I’m doing research in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology with Dr. Brett McKinney in the Insilico Research Group
Adrienne and I are enjoying watching Sydney grow up, and have taken a ridiculous number of pics and videos.
I’ve updated the About page previously with some of the info, but figured I’d throw up a post as well — how many people regularly check About pages anyway?
I’ll try and maintain regular updates going forward… next post, Dec. 16 2012 😉
As an update to my previous Cloud Computing post, I came across an interesting grid/distributed computing project, the World Community Grid. The WCG’s aim is to create the world’s largest public computational grid, with the goal of seeking projects that benefit humanity. IBM is the primary corporate sponsor, and, according to the site, it “has donated the hardware, software, technical services and expertise to build the infrastructure for World Community Grid and provides free hosting, maintenance and support.” The agent software used for WCG is based on BOINC, an open source platform for grid and distributed computing projects.
The first project to run on WCG resources is Human Proteome Folding. This involves calculating the precise spatial configuration of proteins, and can be used to identify the ways in which defects in protein folding can cause certain diseases. There are currently 11 projects, including Cancer research, Clean Energy, and producing genetically-optimized strains of nutritious rice.
Personally, I hope to see the WCG expand its reach. It would be interesting to see a major hardware manufacturer (looking in your direction Dell, HP, Apple) include a WCG agent in the default OS image, similar to the agreements with Google, Firefox, et. al. with regards to bundled software. Imagine if even one large vendor enabled grid software on all new machines. Of course, the owner should be informed of the existence of this software, and its benefit explained. Most people probably would never know or care, as long as the agent ran on idle CPU time. Many would likely be impressed that _their_ computer could be used to one day cure a disease such as cancer, or solve an equally pernicious problem that plagues humanity.