Engineer Software

PATRICK BROOS

Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics ****@*****.***.***

Pennsylvania State University (PSU) http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/

patrickbroos on LinkedIn

*** ***** ***, ********** ***k, PA 16802

OVERVIEW

Twenty years experience developing algorithms, software, and hardware to support

scienti c research.

Long-term, direct, and productive collaboration with scientists and engineers.

Signi cant experience in technical writing/editing (publications, manuals).

Motivated by environments where knowledge, not pro t, is the primary goal.

Vetted by federal background investigation (Top Secret clearance, ESL Inc., 1988)

SKILLS

Research Collaboration with Scientists and Engineers

I supported:

all aspects of developing space instrumentation proposal, design, construction, testing/calibration,

operations (ACIS X-ray camera on NASA s Chandra X-ray Observatory, UVOT optical cam-

era on NASA s Swift Observatory). (PSU)

all aspects of space-based astronomy research proposals, data reduction, science analysis,

publication of results (>30 Chandra projects). (PSU)

reduction and analysis of large data sets for large collaborations (CCCP project, >50 scien-

tists). (PSU)

ground-based telescope operations scheduling algorithm (master s thesis), observing assis-

tant, data analysis software. (Wyoming Infrared Observatory)

medical research software development, lab assistant. (cardiac ultrasound lab at Clayton

Foundation; automated blood analysis lab at BMD, Inc.)

Communication

Authored journal publications (5 as rst-author, 60 as co-author).

Edited 100 proposals and journal manuscripts for collaborators.

Authored manuals and supported users for public software packages (ACIS Extract, TARA).

Developed complex recipes for data reduction/analysis (Chandra X-ray Observatory).

Served on three formal NASA project design reviews (Swift Observatory).

Maintained long relationships with NASA software development teams (CIAO, XSPEC) to

provide feedback and troubleshoot problems.

Data Analysis Algorithms, Simulation/Modeling

I developed:

a Naive Bayes classi er for astronomical objects detected in X-ray observations.

software to match astronomical catalogs and statistically characterize reliability of results.

a Monte-Carlo simulator of an X-ray detector1 .

algorithms and tools to correct for two non-linearities in X-ray detectors ( charge transfer

ine ciency 1 and photon pile-up ).

procedures to detect objects in imagery via maximum-likelihood image reconstruction.

both spatial and spectral background modeling algorithms for X-ray observations (photon-

counting regime).

1

co-developed with Leisa Townsley

Software Development

Authored a data analysis package (ACIS Extract2 ) that has supported the X-ray astronomy

community for a decade (84 registered users, 160 journal citations3 ).

Authored a data visualization package (TARA2 ) that has supported research for 17 years.

Developed/tested embedded software4 that ew in two NASA instruments (UVOT5, CUBIC)

and controlled a classi ed signal processing system (ESL, Inc.).

Participated in NASA s formal software engineering process (two years developing/testing

UVOT ight software).

Integrated domain-standard tools (CIAO, MARX, XSPEC) with custom applications.

Developed/tested/ elded a multi-threaded application (ATICA telemetry processor4 ).

Hardware Development

Designed digital hardware (discrete logic, programmable gate array). (ESL Inc.)

Operated spectrophotometer for calibration of medical instrument prototype. (BMD, Inc.)

Worked with mechanical systems and tools at a hobby level.

Field Research

I supported a variety of R&D activities at national research facilities:

spacecraft operations (ACIS on-orbit commissioning at Chandra X-ray Center, 1999).

spacecraft pre-launch testing (Swift Observatory at Kennedy Space Center, 2004).

instrument calibration (UVOT at Goddard Space Flight Center, 2003; ACIS at Marshall

Space Flight Center, 1997; ACIS at Synchrotron Radiation Center, Wisconsin, 1997; ACIS

at National Synchrotron Light Source, Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1997).

spacecraft integration/environmental testing (Swift at Goddard Space Flight Center, 2003).

software integration testing (Southwest Research Inc., 2001; Mullard Space Science Labora-

tory, University College London, 2002).

ground-based telescope operations (Wyoming Infrared Observatory, 10 nights, 1990 93).

EDUCATION

MS in Computer Science University of Wyoming, Laramie (1993)

thesis: An Expert System for Telescope Scheduling6

Master of Electrical Engineering Rice University, Houston (1987)

BS in Electrical Engineering Rice University, Houston (1985)

EMPLOYERS

Penn State University: 1994 present, research assistant, software systems engineer

Hewlett Packard, Magneto-optical Storage Products: 1989 91, production engineer

ESL, Inc.: 1987 89, digital hardware engineer

IBM, Inc.: 1994 (1 month), contract programmer

University of Wyoming, Department of Physics and Astronomy: 1994 (3 months), program-

mer

University of Wyoming, Computer Science Department: 1991-93, research assistant

Texas Heart Institute, Houston: 1986 (3 months), programmer

Boehringer Mannheim Diagnostics (BMD), Houston: 1985 (3 months), lab technician, pro-

grammer

Clayton Foundation For Research, Houston: 1983 (15 months), programmer

2

written in the IDL language

3

100 citations before 2010; 59 citations after 2010

4

written in the C language

5

VxWorks operating system

6

written in the LISP language

PUBLICATIONS

As rst author ...

A Catalog of Chandra X-ray Sources in the Carina Nebula, 2011, Astrophysical Journal

Supplement, 194, 2

A Naive Bayes Source Classi er for X-ray Sources, 2011, Astrophysical Journal Supplement,

194, 4

Innovations in the Analysis of Chandra-ACIS Observations, 2010, Astrophysical Journal,

714, 1582 (59 citations)

The Young Stellar Population in M17 Revealed by Chandra, 2007, Astrophysical Journal

Supplement, 169, 353

Discarding Piled-up Events in ACIS, 1998, X-ray Optics, Instruments, and Missions, Proc. SPIE 3444

Compositional Instance-Based Learning, 1994, Proc. of the Twelfth National Conference on Arti cial

Intelligence

Compositional Instance-Based Acquisition of Preference Predicates, 1993, Proc. of the

AAAI-93 Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning

As co-author ...

I co-authored numerous refereed papers ( 60) and conference publications. Most can be found at

the Astrophysics Data System digital library portal7 ; others are listed below.

Automated Acquisition of User Preferences, 1997, K. Branting and P. Broos, International Journal of

Human-Computer Studies, 46:5577

The IRAS Galactic Plane Supplement: The Additional Observations, 1994, Canterna, R., et al., report

to Mission Research Corp. and the U.S. Air Force, p86

Development of a New Computer-based Automatic Report Generating System for the High Volume

Clinical Ultrasound Laboratory, 1984, Edelman, S., et al., supplement to Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine,

Volume 3, Number 9, p197

This document contains hyperlinks and is available online at

August 2012

http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/patb/resume.pdf

7

http://adsabs.harvard.edu

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