About Me

Well, if you chose this page, you must be interested a bit in my biography. Okay, well, you asked for it! :-) To avoid the silly mixing of personal and research history that would inevitably result from a chronological listing, I'm splitting this page up into a few subhistories.

Educational History

I attended high school at Archbishop Bergan Jr./Sr. High School in Fremont, NE, and I graduated valedictorian in 1995. In Fall 1995, I began my undergraduate studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). I studied abroad in Berlin and Hanover, Germany from January to July 1996, and I wrote a senior thesis on applying finite difference schemes to groundwater flow in 1999. My last year of study was supported by a Barry M. Goldwater scholarship. I graduated summa cum laude with double majors in Mathematics and German and double minors in physics and economics in May 1999. Afterwards, I attended graduate school in mathematics at UNL for a year.

In June 2000, I began my graduate studies at the University of Minnesota (UMN) in the mathematics program. My studies there were supported by a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. In August/September 2003, I completed my M.S. in Mathematics with Emphasis in Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

In September 2003, I began my studies at the University of California-Irvine (UCI) in applied and computational mathematics. I plan to complete my Ph.D. in Applied and Computational Mathematics in 2006.

Research History

I had my first taste of research in 1998, when I began researching groundwater flow and basic finite difference methods for my undergraduate honors thesis. That research was conducted under my co-advisors David Logan and Steve Cohn. I also got a lot of help from Thomas Shores. I'm grateful that UNL's Honors Program required an honors thesis, as it helped me learn how much I enjoy it.

At Minnesota from June 2000 to August 2001, I had an internship with 3M under Alessandra Chiareli, in which I researched fiber optics and fiber Bragg gratings. Fadil Santosa was my advisor at that time. In June 2001, I switched advisors to John Lowengrub and began studying computational fluid mechanics, level set methods, and the simulation of 2D tumor growth.

In the summer of 2004, I began to extend my methods to the 3D simulation of tumor growth and other such geometry-dependent evolving interface problems.

Programming and Computer History

I've been very fortunate to have been exposed to computers from a very young age. When I was growing up, my dad used to bring home an old "portable" computer that was about the size of a small suitcase with a 6 inch monochrome screen (Was it green or orange? My memories are fading!) and a fold-out keyboard. I remember playing FriendlyWare and the original King's Quest on that machine and getting my first exposure to computers. I wish I could remember the name of that computer. (Update: I'm all but certain it was a Compaq Portable.)

In fifth grade, I was fortunate to have access to an Apple ][e. I learned a little Basic and the fundamentals of logical program structure. I also got to play more than a bit of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?". My family bought an IBM PS/2 Model 25 for Christmas in 1988, which had an 8 MHz 8086 chip, 640 KB of RAM, a nifty 20MB hdd, DOS 3.3, and the i8087 math coprocessor that I watched my Dad install. With this machine, I got to learn DOS and some more of the basics of computing.

In my sophomore year in college, I bought my first computer: a Gateway 2000 based on a 200 MHz Pentium Pro and 32 MB of EDO RAM. At the time, it was one of the fastest things out there. Coming in at about $3000, I also had to take out my first loan to buy it. My, how times have changed (for the better)! On that computer, I learned my way around Windows 95, was introduced to multiplayer gaming (Quake and Half-Life), learned to write my first website, and eventually learned to write simple programs in Maple for my undergraduate thesis.

In graduate school in Minnesota, I first learned to program in Matlab and then in C++, which is currently my preferred language. I picked up a bit of OpenGL and GLUT starting in December 2002, and have had fun writing some basic libraries (such as a cross-platform BMP library that I often use for any scientific visualization programs I write).

In August 2001, I built my first computer, based on a 933 MHz Pentium III and 512 MB of PC133. It was then that I caught the overclocking bug and eventually souped the system up to a 1.26 GHz PIII-S overclocked to about 1450 MHz. In my search for learning to get better and quieter computer performance, I found the overclockers forums, where I participate as macklin01. I still hang out there now as a moderator.

As for now, I'm programming on a Pentium 4 3.0C overclocked to 3.4 GHz, and I'm still working in C++ for my research programming. I'm trying to learn some new data structures to make my programs more efficient, and I also hope to learn parallel computing soon. We'll see where this all goes!

In January 2005, I released my first open-source project: the EasyBMP Cross-Platform C++ Bitmap Library. It allows even the novice programmer to read, write, and modify Windows bitmaps on a variety of platforms. It is a good way to get image data in and out of a programs without a lot of fuss. Scientists writing their own scientific visualization apps may want to take a look! :-)

Some Personal History

I was born on March 30, 1977 in Fremont, Nebraska, a beautiful town of about 23,000 people. I was a big fan of Legos, tearing around on my bike, watching trains, playing Transformers and Atari with my best friend, taking things apart and trying to reassemble them, and generally making a nuisance of myself.

In high school, I liked to keep busy. I was a distance runner in track (1600m, 3200m, 4x800m relay, some pole vaulting; personal best: 1600m in 5:18) and a cross country runner (personal best: 5k in 18:48). I also participated in speech team competitions, particularly extemporaneous speaking. (Personal best: Class C Nebraska State Champ in 1995.) I was a lousy singer in choir and was a pianist and percussionist. At that point in my life, I planned to major in concert piano in college.

In my senior year in high school, I had the opportunity to take calculus at the local college. I learned that I really liked (applied) math and decided to go to school in mathematics.

There's not much to say about my college career that hasn't already been stated. I tried Air Force ROTC for a semester and didn't like it. I studied in Germany for several months and loved that. During my last semester, I met the most wonderful person in the world and fell in love with her. Needless to say, I liked that. :-)

Angela and I were engaged in the summer of 1999. The best day of my life was on May 20, 2000, when we were married. Since then, every day has been a little better than the day before.

We moved to Minneapolis, MN in June 2000, where we lived through gigantic mosquitos, swarms of Vikings fans, and awful winters. I finished my M.S. in September 2003, and we got the heck out.

We've been living and working in Irvine, CA ever since. We've enjoyed the beaches here in Southern California, as well as the biking and hiking (Crystal Cove, Sequoia National Park, Joshua Tree N.P.). I hope to finish my Ph.D. by 2006 and move on to the biomedical industry.

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Okay, so this bio was a bit math and programming-heavy, but what did you expect on a computational biophysicist's website? :-P My contact information is below.

Contact Information:

email: pmacklin @ math . uci . edu