Benjamin J. Cotton

bcotton@funnelfiasco.com

Experience

IT Systems & Operations, Purdue University

Systems Research Engineer (Oct. 2009 - present)

• Curate and develop Condor distributed computing environment at Purdue
• Create and maintain campus grid software and middleware for local and DiaGrid partner institutions
• Provide systems and user support for national grid computing activities (e.g. TeraGrid/XSEDE)
• Administer research 4000 hosts as part of computing cluster and infrastructure resources
• Provide training to internal and external audiences
• Develop frameworks for documentation
• Serve as Security Officer for IT Systems and Operations, representing the organization to the CISO and serving as a liaison with the Networks and Security group.
• Supervise 10-12 student employees

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science, Purdue University

Unix Workstation Support/Systems Administrator (September 2006 - October 2009)

• Maintain and develop departmental Linux and Solaris servers
• Provide support to users of Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, and Windows platforms
• Serve as lead for departmental IT staff and representative to department faculty and other groups on campus
• Serve as Security Contact for department, working with University- and College-level security staff to respond to security incidents in the department
• Supervise 3-5 student employees
• Approve departmental IT purchases and maintain IT budget
• Coordinate professional development of IT staff and provide training to faculty and staff

Temporary Service (May - September 2006)

• Provide support to users of Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, and Windows platforms
• Perform general labor services at the direction of the Assistant Department Head

Student Service (April 2002 - May 2006)

• Maintain Unidata LDM software for weather data ingest
• Develop scripts to generate weather data images for web and desktop use
• Provide support to users of data visualization software
• Administer Forecast Game, including maintain web pages and scripts, obtaining verification data, and handling player enrollment

Education

• M.S. in IT Project Management, expected December 2014
  • Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
• B.S. in Synoptic Meteorology (minor: Organizational Leadership), granted May 2006
  • Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN

External activities/memberships

• Conference blogger, LISA Conference (2010, 2011)
• Featured weather blogger, JConline.com (2010-present)
• Member, League of Professional Systems Administrators (2009-present)
• Contributor, Sysadvent Blog (2009, 2010)
• Documentation Team, Fedora Project (2009-present)
  • Documentation Team Lead (2011-present)
  • Writer (2009-present)
• GitHub site: https://github.com/funnelfiasco

Publications/presentations

• "Condor in your machine room and on your campus" (panel), Condor Week (May 2011)
• "Condor at Purdue: Vegetating, Virtualization, and Videos" (presentation), Condor Week (May 2011)
• "Extending a Desktop Computing Grid with Cloud Resources" (extended abstract), Cloud Computing and Its Applications conference (April 2011)
• Condor BoF host, LISA Conference (November 2010)