Hi, I'm Robert Howard

Theoretical physicist turned software engineer


CV

About
Education
MSc in High Performance Computing September 2014 - September 2015
Trinity College, Dublin
Overall Grade: 66% (II.1)
B.A. in Theoretical Physics September 2010 - June 2014
Trinity College, Dublin
Overall Grade: 65% (II.1)
Leaving Certificate September 2005 - June 2010
St. Peter's College, Dunboyne
Overall Grade: 520 points (95th percentile)
Relevant Work Experience
Druid Software October 2015 - Present
Software Engineer Bray, Co. Wicklow
Druid specialises in mobile network core technology.
School of Mathematics January 2015 - May 2015
Maths Tutor Trinity College, Dublin
Gave calculus tutorials to a group of 15 first year general science students and corrected assignments on a weekly basis.
Research Experience
Master's Thesis May 2015 - September 2015
GPU Acceleration of Hadron Field Formulation in Lattice QCD
Developed software with the CUDA parallel programming platform to calculate colour contractions of hadronic operators commonly used in lattice quantum chromodynamics using GPU acceleration.
Summer Internship Project May 2014 - August 2014
One-Loop Matching Factors for Non-Exceptional Schemes
The project explored an open problem in quantum field theory, the calculation of matching factors for different renormalisation schemes.
Final Year Undergraduate Thesis September 2013 - January 2014
Spontaneous Emission Above a Metamaterial Slab
Computational physics project in the field of nanophotonics. The aim of the project was to implement a mathematical formalism in order to quantify how the spontaneous emission rate of a two-level quantum system is altered when placed in the vicinity of a slab of negative refractive index.
Technical Strengths
Programming Languages C/C++, Python, Bash, Javascript, Lua, Matlab
Debugging Tools GDB, valgrind, nm, strace, wireshark/tcpdump
Web Development HTML, CSS, Javascript, Gunicorn, Nginx, Bootstrap, Django
Parallel Programming APIs MPI, OpenMP, CUDA, pthreads
Operating Systems Linux (Ubuntu and CentOS distributions), OS X

Portfolio

Below is a short list of some personal development projects I have worked on.

Guindex
A web application that keeps track of Guinness prices throughout Ireland from user submissions.
Maze Generator
A demonstration of Eller's algorithm for maze generation in javascript.
Poem per Day
A web app that generates a new poem per day using the PoetryDB API.
Painting per Day
A web app that generates a new painting per day using the Artsy API.

Contact

Please send me a message if you would like to get in touch.