Samuel Grayson

I am a PhD student on a crusade to improve software quality in research software. I want to be well-rounded in a variety of topics including math, physics, data science, law, history, and music theory. I have a passion for learning, teaching, and encouraging diversity.

Research

More than half of scientists across all fields develop software for their research (Hettrick). These scientists have the responsibilities of a software engineer, but they may not have that training. While scrutiny, independent reproducibility, and building on prior work undergird the scientific method (Merton), "research software" powering publications is often inscrutible, irreproducible, and not extensible (Collberg and Proebsting) despite best effort.

We can improve this problem by using software tools and changing incentives. However, software engineering industrial tools need “translation” to work for the unique problems, environment, and users in the scientific domain. The incentives should be more instructive than just nominally “open”, and they should build on FAIR principles (Katz et al.).

Publications

• Real-World Experiences Adopting Workflows at Exascale on the ExaAM Project, ReWorDS 2022
• ILLIXR: Enabling End-to-End Extended Reality Research, IIWSC 2021, Best Paper Award, IEEE MICRO Top Picks 2022
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Essays

• Stop writing shell scripts
• Monads as a Programming Pattern
• Creative Thinking in Math Class (TEDxUTDallas 2018)
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