Robert Soliday

Background

About Robert Soliday

I write the software that helps keep the Advanced Photon Source’s 1.1‑km storage ring up and running for the users—and I love turning moving parts into one push‑button machine. WHAT I DO • Principal Computer Scientist, Argonne National Laboratory—27 years shaping accelerator controls, data logging, and high‑performance computing. • Creator & lead maintainer of the SDDS Toolkit, elegant, and 400+ diagnostic utilities used at 30+ labs on four continents. • Architect and caretaker of a 200‑node SLURM cluster that crunches APS‑U beam‑dynamics simulations around the clock. IMPACT SNAPSHOT • Cut injector start‑up time 30% by automating LINAC & Booster procedures. • Delivered >50 SDDS/elegant releases, adding GPU acceleration and 64‑bit data paths. • Saved $149 by repurposing Infiniband hardware and upgrading Lustre backups to zero‑loss resilience. • Released APSStatus Android & Ionic CDB‑Inventory apps; downloads and counting. • Answer 200+ community questions yearly in the elegant forum—bridging science teams from CERN to SLAC. WHAT I’M BUILDING NOW • EPICS 7/PVA loggers that stream thousands of data points from next‑gen power supplies. • SDDS improvements with the goal of widening the usage community. CORE STRENGTHS Accelerator Automation • HPC Cluster Architecture • EPICS (3/7, CA & PVA) • SDDS Toolkit & elegant • C | C++| Python | Java | Tcl/Tk • GPU Computing (CUDA/OpenACC) • SLURM & Lustre • Data Logging & Time‑Series Analysis • Android & Ionic Apps • Continuous‑Improvement