Eric Appelt
6921 Collinswood Dr, Nashville, TN, 37221
email: eric.appelt@gmail.com
phone: +1 615 335 4375
Profile and Objective
- Devops engineer with experience in
petascale data management, distributed systems,
high-throughput computing (HTC), high-performance computing (HPC),
and web services.
- Accomplished scientific researcher with an extensive mathematical
background and experience with a wide range of data analysis
techniques and scientific methodology.
- Software developer with experience writing analysis and simulation code,
RESTful webservices, and infrastructure monitoring
in python, C/C++, bash, and other languages.
- Interested in hybrid and remote opportunities to work with a
dynamic team developing and operating high-performance or large scale
computing environments,
and to further develop my skills with interesting new technologies.
Employment
Vanderbilt University (2022-2024)
- Job Title: Senior DevOps Engineer
- Administration and development of the HTC/HPC Slurm computing cluster at the Advanced Computing Center for Research and Education (ACCRE) Facility
- Deputy administrator for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Tier-2 Open Science Grid (OSG) computing site
- Project leader for major configuration management conversion from CFEngine to Ansible, wrote custom Ansible modules in python, wrote multiple complex Ansible roles, trained other team members in Ansible development.
- Developed server lifecycle-management procedures and solutions for the ACCRE environment using Foreman
Vanderbilt University (2017-2022)
- Job Title: Senior Linux System Administrator
- Administration and development of the HTC/HPC Slurm computing cluster at the ACCRE Facility
- Development and administration of the ACCRE Visualization Portal based on Open OnDemand including scripting of custom applications for Vanderbilt research needs
- Redesigned and administered the ACCRE ELK Monitoring cluster
- Wrote and deployed python library for automation of ACCRE systems administration tasks and central account administrative database allowing automation of user creation and other account management tasks, developed and taught informal summer python programming course for ACCRE staff and interns
- Designed and administered internal services for LDAP authentication, DNS name servers, infrastructure monitoring and paging with nagios, PostgreSQL databases, and cluster account management
IBM Cloudant (2015-2017)
- Job title: Cloudant Software Engineer.
- Re-architected the Cloudant account metering system
as a distributed application.
- Planning and development for Cloudant integration with
IBM Identity Access Management (IAM) system.
- Collaboration with Operations and Customer Support including
taking shifts when required.
- Supporting work in Cloudant-to-DashDB integration for
data warehousing.
- Automation of the Cloudant service API integration testing
suite.
Vanderbilt University (2014-2015)
- Job title: Postdoctoral research associate.
- Member of the international
CMS
project with computing and software responsibilities.
- Development and use of monitoring and data transfer software
for the
ACCRE
petascale data analysis computing center.
- Development of stochastic simulations for analyzing
the efficiency and tuning the performance of pattern recognition
algorithms.
University School of Nashville (2003-2008)
- Job Title: High School Mathematics and Physics Teacher.
- Taught AP Physics C and AP Statistics courses with
a pass rate above 95%.
- Completed Vanderbilt Research Experience for Teachers (RET)
program in functional MRI and developed published physics
curriculum module.
- Piloted distance learning mathematical physics course while
stationed in Geneva, Switzerland (2010).
Education
Vanderbilt University (2008-2014)
- Degree Earned: Ph.D. Physics (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions)
- Dissertation Title: Measurement of Charged-Particle Transverse
Momentum Spectra in PbPb Collisions at √sNN
= 2.76 TeV and in pPb Collisions at √sNN =
5.02 TeV with the CMS detector
Miami University (2000-2002)
- Degree Earned: M.A. Mathematics (Graph Theory)
- Thesis Title: On the Bandwidth of a Product of
Complete Graphs
Miami University (1997-2000)
- Degree Earned: B.S. Mathematics and Engineering Physics
- Cum Laude
Skills
- Over ten years experience developing data analysis,
cluster monitoring, and web services
software in python, C++, C, bash, and other languages.
- Data analysis using various frameworks in python and C++.
- Understanding of RESTful API principles, HTTP, concurrency, and common patterns in webservice implementations.
- Continuous integration: Jenkins and Travis-CI.
- Configuration management: Chef, Ansible, CFEngine.
- Revision control: git and github, prior experience in mercurial, CVS, and SVN.
- Over twenty years Linux administration experience including cluster computing and cloud
environments.
- Extensive background in mathematical modeling, statistical analysis, and Monte Carlo simulations
Awards and Grants
- IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award (2016)
- Nuclear Physics A Young Scientist Award (2014)
- Vanderbilt Physics Most Outstanding Student Paper Award (2013)
- DOE Office of Science Graduate Fellowship (2010-2013)
- Vanderbilt Physics Robert T. Langemann Award (2009)
Selected Conference Presentations
- PyOhio 2017, A brief introduction to concurrency and coroutines (tutorial)
- PyTennessee 2017, A brief introduction to concurrency and coroutines