Professional Freelancer

Scientific Software and Visualization Developer

Major open source contributions and collaborations:

• DNA-HIVE/Weill Cornell Medical Center collaboration (Presbyterian hospital/Cornell University, New York, USA);
• OHIF viewer, RadicalImaging/IDC collaboration (Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA);
• SLIM microscopy viewer, RadicalImaging/IDC collaboration (Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA);
• SlicerAstro maintenance (Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, Groningen, Netherlands);
• Major contribution for the new 3DSlicer – a C++/Python image computing platform optimized for 2D/3D visualization – interactive markups (The Perk Lab - Queen's University, Kingston, Canada).

Examples of successfully deployed projects:

• ibpark: a Qt-VTK GUI for a CDF (computational fluid dynamics) immersed boundary solver and related grid generator;
• CPA: an application for caisson patient assessment using temporal computed tomography (CT) scan of hearths.

Scientific Software and Visualization Developer

Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen.
SlicerAstro, an astronomy (HI) C++ extension for 3DSlicer, development:

• implementation of various modules in SlicerAstro for specialized quantitative visualization,
• contributions to the 3DSlicer source code (3D views linking and new interactive plotting infrastructure),

with the goal of offering visual analytics techniques (algorithms and user/software interactions) for a faster and improved interaction with the complex 3D astronomical data.

Visiting Scholar: Kitware Inc.

A scholar visit in the Carrboro (Noth Carolina, USA) office for developing several customization features in 3DSlicer required by SlicerAstro and other extensions. For example:

• Support for managing custom Slicer orientations presets,
• GPU based volumetric filters,

These were implemented with the help of kitware's experts. The visit was hosted by J.C. Fillion Robin.

PhD Astronomy

Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen.
3D Visualization and Analysis of HI in and around galaxies.
During my PhD, I worked mainly I worked mainly on the creation of SlicerAstro. Specifically, I have led all the development phases of SlicerAstro:

• review the visualization prerequisites by understanding deep down the astronomical data and the required algorithms (i.e. novelty image processing techniques) and tools (e.g. 3D visualization, galaxies modeling) to interactively visualize and analyze the large HI datasets (Big Data) in full 3D domain from upcoming blind surveys;
• design the software solution and define a roadmap;
• build the solution using the agile software development principle.

The thesis is available at the following link.
Supervisor: prof. dr. J.M. (Thijs) van der Hulst.

Visiting Scholar: Leiden Observatory.

A scholar visit at the Leiden Observatory (Netherlands) for:

• including HiGPUs (a N-body code running on cluster equipped with GPUs) in the framework of AMUSE (Astrophysical Multipurpose Software Environment);
• investigating solar system dynamics exploiting several Dutch cluster infrastructures such as SARA.

The visit was hosted by prof. dr. S. Portegies Zwart and funded also by the HPC-Europa2 grant I won (number: 1249).

PhD Astronomy

Department of Physics, University of Rome.
Hybrid CPU-GPU cluster N-body simulations and solar system dynamics.
I specialized in scientific computing focusing on the exploitation of GPU in HPC. I contributed in a major way to HiGPUs (a N-body code running on cluster equipped with GPUs) and I studied solar system dynamics trough N-body simulations. The PhD ended prematurely because of absence of funds. Supervisor: prof. dr. R. Capuzzo Dolcetta.