Computational Science and Engineering Support

The Computational Science and Engineering Group, like many of the other activities related to research computing support on Princeton's campus is a collaborative effort. The people in our group and who respond to the e-mail address cses@princeton.edu come from OIT and PICSciE (plus some other departments). Information about each of those people is included here.

Bill Guthe helps faculty, staff and students use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and satellite image processing software. Prior to joining OIT in 2000, he held a number of positions in New Jersey state government integrating GIS into environmental decision-making. Bill works closely with Tsering Wangyal Shawa, the GIS librarian in the Princeton University Library, to provide training and ongoing support to GIS and remote sensing software users. These include short training sessions, half-semester courses, and customized training provided as part of other courses. Bill also helps individuals with coding or processing issues they may encounter using the software. With Simon Su, Bill supports users of the PICSciE Visualization Laboratory to explore spatial and scientific information in a large-screen, high-definition display environment.

Curt Hillegas has a background in Chemistry with a B.S. from Lehigh University and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. His work in the area of quantum mechanical control of molecular dynamics and ultrafast laser spectroscopy gave him the opportunity to develop computer models of the experimental systems he studied. His love of computing lead him away from experimental science and through a career that has allowed him to be a systems programmer, an e-mail specialist, a mass storage specialist, and an IT manager. With Betty Leydon, CIO and VP for Information Technology and Serge Goldstein, Associate CIO and Director of Academic Services, Curt helped to found the group that has become CSES providing much needed support to the research community. Now reporting to both OIT and PICSciE he leads the effort to provide the hardware, software, storage, infrastructure, administration, and support that enable researchers at Princeton to use information techology to advance scientific knowledge and discovery.

Robert Knight came to work for Princeton in 1970, working for the University's central computing facility through all of its various renamings.   He started as a compiler specialist.   In the late 1970's, he developed an operating system and suite of compilers and applications, formed a company, and took it public.   The system was used as part of instruments made a North America electronics maker as well as part of a Japanese personal computer.   In 1989, Robert returned to work at Princeton, implementing a part of the TCP/IP software for the IBM mainframe OS and supporting the Princeton written Ethernet driver for the mainframe.   He went on to manage the central IT mainframe group, and then the combined central IT mainframe / Unix / PC / Macintosh group.   This was eventually extended to managing the database administrators as well.    Next, he worked as OIT's Senior Technologist.  Robert now provides support for scientific and engineering programming, with particular emphasis on high performance parallel computing.

Simon Su joined PICSciE in the December of 2008 with a background in scientific visualization and virtual reality. His experience with large scale display systems started when he first stepped foot into a 4-side CAVE display system during his graduate school years. Upon graduation, he worked at different research institutions with numerous display systems including a 6-sided CAVE display system,a  large curved-screen stereo display system, a multi-projection flat-screen stereo display system, a doom-like display system, an immersive desk display system, and a portable stereo display system. He has also used magnetic, ultrasonic, and inertial based 3D tracking devices to support real-time 3D interaction with the immersive display systems. Simon now provides data visualization support including high performance parallel visualization efforts and display system hardware support.