Scientific Software Programming Engineer with over many years of experience solving problems. Professional strengths lie in FORTRAN & C and integrating legacy code with new advances in digital technology. A demonstrated history of working well within teams of colleagues to produce dramatic improvements in existing systems and independently designing innovative breakthroughs to take advantage of newly arriving technologies.
Technical Skills:
Programming Languages:
Extensive C Language Programming
Extensive FORTRAN
Introductory Java
C++ familiarity (debugged & fixed source)
Pro*C, Pro*Fortran and SQL
ksh, bash, csh scripting
AWK and some Perl and some JavaScript
HTML
some MOTIF & other X-window programming
some HP 4501 Protocol Analyzer Programming
Software Tools:
Makefiles & make & RCS & some CVS, Clear Case, imake
EMACS, nedit, see, WORDPAD, WORD, SOS, Photoshop
Win32, Gnome, Motif, FTP, fastmail
Operating Systems:
SGI Origin,Octane,Irix Unix
RedHat Linux, Slackware Linux
Some Solaris & HP/UX experience, some VxWorks
Harris/Concurrent Nighthawk Unix
Harris 1000 Vulcan OS (a 24-bit machine)
PC DOS and MS Windows 95-XP familiarity
DEC-10 and & ancient card deck IBM 360
Databases:
Oracle 6, 7 via SQL*Plus and Pro*C interfaces
CBASE, a freeware database running on Slackware Linux communications system
invented a completely new database for planned RedHat 7.3 Linux communications system
FCOM - the File-Communication system
SAGA - the Satellite Graphical Analyzer
The Montachusett Region Land Use Survey
Security Clearances:
Secret DOD Clearance 1985-2004, 2007-2010
COMSEC clearance 1992-2002
Professional Experience:
Software Test Engineer
January-2007 to December-2008
BAE Systems, 95 Canal Street, Nashua, New Hampshire 03033
Subcontracted by CSS Technical Staffing, Wilmington, Delaware
Performed Software Testing for the Common Missile Warning System (CMWS) and the Advanced Threat Infra-Red Counter-Measure (ATIRCM) programs developed at BAE Systems as highlighted below.
Tested new software development for the ATIRCM/CMWS system. Using prepared sheets of detailed step-by-step procedures, this system of processors and the Ethernet communications between them demonstrate successful verification of the Software Requirement Specifications for the customer. The Software is written in Ada and executes in an embedded VxWorks operating system on the processors. The testing is performed with a System Integration Laboratory running on a Sun workstation LAN. Reported back to the Software Team anything that needed to be fixed.
Edited and revised existing Software Test Descriptions and Software Test Reports to comply with the company's contracted formatting standard. Wrote 2 new Software Test Descriptions. Maintained Excel spreadsheets of the formal test progress by each process in the system. Developed awk and csh scripts to improve the user interface during testing.
Senior Software Engineer
1984-2002
MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Millstone Hill Radar Station, Westford, Massachusetts 01886
Subcontracted by Lockheed Martin Corporation and CDI Compdata Services Corporation
Designed and developed and maintained real-time software applications and libraries, running 24/7 for the Millstone Hill Radar Tracking Station, in the Surveillance Operations Group, as described below.
Invented and implemented the File-based Communication System (FCOM), a multi-platform IPC package for passing commands and data between all of the real-time programs comprising the satellite tracking system used by LSSC and KSSC. FCOM has been in routine use since 1992 and continues to port easily to any platform encountered. Using files with flags, it is robust and impervious to system interruptions. Wrote the User Manual for FCOM, which is on file at the Laboratory and the Radar Station. FCOM replaced the old outmoded MONITOR COMMON system, limited to a mere 69 command slots. Under FCOM the 30+ or so processes now can queue millions of commands for each other, limited only by the current available disk space online.
Took leadership of all the correlation software at the Millstone Hill Radar Station & the 1st Space Control Squadron (1SPCS) at Cheyenne Mountain, the Lincoln Space Surveillance Complex (LSSC) and the Kwajalein Space Surveillance Complex (KSSC). Wrote interractive programs icor & elcor to handle requests from local analysts and real-time program obcor to analyze incoming observations from the global network. These programs run with the Oracle Database at Kwajalein, the ASCII file database at 1SPCS in Colorado, and the hybrid of both at Millstone.
Took charge of all the real-time satellite element set processing and historical data storage via new programs esp and hdamgr. Wrote a real-time process, uctmgr, to analyze incoming messages containing uncorrelated element set data from the Deep Space Network. This automatic process identifies unknown elsets by matching them to existing catalogued satellites.
Took charge of the Millstone Communications System, a battery of real-time programs to handle the data link to the Deep Space Network via the Cheyenne Mountain facility in Colorado, the Mobile Optical Sensor in Spain & the orbiting space-based optical sensor on the MSX satellite, along with the existing world-wide sensor network. These programs exchange data with systems on the local network via e-mail & FCOM. Ported nearly all of this package to RedHat Linux. Wrote a new message manager for the RedHat platform to replace the obsolete Slackware Linux version. Designed and built a new database system to keep latest million messages on active call & store all historical data on duplicated disks, to be integrated with the future system.
Built an algebraic Satellite Graphical Analyzer (SAGA), graphical interface for plotting various forms of historical data, incorporating an algebraic expression parser. This allows the user to enter plotting variables in the form of mathematical equations using standard math library functions and use the algebraic output to make custom displays and viewgraphs. A by-product of this is the utility program CALEX, a calculator of algebraic expressions, running on all platforms, also written in C.
Rewrote old and outmoded FORTRAN code in C for the new UNIX real-time systems as they came online. Ported software from Harris-1000 computers to the Harris Nighthawk UNIX computers and then again to the SGI Origin UNIX computers. Developed a software revision and control interface to maintain Ident files of all code in use at LSSC & KSSC.
Scientific Computer Programmer
1980-1984
System Development Corporation, Department of Transportation
DOT Center, Cambridge MA
Wrote scientific computer programs on a DEC-10 in FORTRAN for various transportation projects, including:
Working with code to implement a Quadratic Programming solution to traffic loading.
Analyzing wheel-rail wear using Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) and moving power spectra.
Working on an economic model of Rail Electrification to analyze Return On Investment scenarios.
Regional Planner
1977-1980
Montachusett Regional Planning Commission
Fitchburg MA
Worked on many varied projects involving the local community development, and in particular:
Designed & carried out a Land Use Inventory for 17 member townships.
Developed a computer model of regional traffic.
Education:
B.S. in Astrophysics, with Honor
Michigan State University
Paper: The Orbital Parameters of Close Binary Stars
Designed from scratch an implementation of a family of single workstation applications, available over the internet via the most common web browsers, written in basic HTML and Java 1.4. The main page has links to rules, tables and three 2-dimensional graphical interfaces for studying an abstract game I invented in 1996. This project is being developed on a RedHat 7.3 Linux platform using Sun Corporation's free J2SDK.
Designed from scratch an astronomy application, available over the internet via the most common web browsers, written in basic HTML and JavaScript. The application calculates a table of Birth Light Events for the user with input forms for birthday, latitude and count of events. This is an on-going home project I undertook to learn JavaScript on my own. The link above will demonstrate the results.
Assumed leadership and coordination of The Boulder Coffeehouse. The Boulder Coffeehouse was a smoke-free, alcohol-free, fair-trade coffee, candlelit venue for folk and other musical genres, located at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church of Fitchburg, MA, 923 Main Street on the Upper Common. I booked the performers and was the MC for each show. The coffeehouse raised proceeds for various local non-profit organizations and charities on a rotating basis chosen by the featured performer. I also created and maintained the coffeehouse website at http://xongsmith.webs.com/boulder.html .