I’m Bruce Berriman, Senior Scientist, Project Manager, and Computer Scientist at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at Caltech. I have worked at IPAC since 2000 and am responsible for managing archive projects. Many of you may know me as the project lead for the Montage image mosaic engine. I have been managing scientific software projects since the early 1990’s. Most recently, I have assumed the role of Program Manager for the Virtual Astronomical Observatory. I want to introduce you to my blog, Astronomy Computing Today, which grew out of my long standing interest in software engineering and computational technologies.
After reading many excellent blogs on astronomy, it dawned on me that a lot of them don’t cover many advances in technology and software engineering that may be great value to astronomers. For example, do many of you know about cloud computing and how powerful it is? You simply buy computing time from a company, and pay only for what you use. It can provide a cheap way to do a lot of bulk processing that is hard to do on a desktop. I have been working with colleagues at the Information Sciences Institute, Univ. of Southern California on this topic, and is the subject of several posts. I also write about general topics that may be of interest to others: my most recent post was on How I Survived in Astronomy. My target audience is astronomers and software engineers interested in computing technologies. Highlights from my recent posts include:
- How much computing should an astronomer learn?
- Why don’t astronomers use the cloud?
- What types of applications are best run on the cloud?
If you have any comments or requests for future posts, please e-mail me at gbb (at) ipac.caltech.edu, or post a comment on my blog: Astronomy Computing Today.