Khurshid Shaymardanov joined the RC team last fall as our new HPC Systems Engineer. Khurshid earned his PhD in Production Systems and Numerical Science from Politecnico di Torino, Italy. He moved to the US eight years ago and started his career as a quality automation engineer at MRB Technimetals Inc. where he found himself drawn to work more towards automation. While writing a program for machines to measure production parts, he found that he also needed to use data science to ensure that the testing was accurate. He then continued developing these skills at Enjet Aero and Volt Active Data, leaning into DevOps. Khurshid finally found himself working at Boston College as a Red Hat Migration Systems Administrator. He felt further drawn towards working in higher education and HPC because he is able to combine different fields and because the work being done with HPC is exciting.

Khurshid is also a married father of two boys. He enjoys traveling with his family, taking the time to spend a few weeks in a new place so that they can learn about the places they are visiting through the local food, architecture, people, fine arts, history, museums, and then reflect about the culture as a whole. This provides more than just a vacation for the family, it’s an experience that they can all share and recall together.

Khurshid answered some questions to help the RC Community learn even more about him.

What led you into your field?

My research as a PhD student in Italy using PALABOS or Parallel Lattice Boltzman method in CFD back in 2012 enlightened my curiosity towards Super Computing and HPCs. A fellowship program I had in India actually showed me the importance even further while working on simulations and numerical methods such as FEA in structural analysis.

Years later, starting my career as a DevOps engineer, and with a passion towards ML and some training on it pushed me further to look for opportunities that could merge all of my interests. That’s how ended up finding myself with RC as an HPC Systems Engineer – just like I wanted it to be.

What are you most excited to be working on right now (or looking forward to working on) in RC?

Unlike the hypervisors, virtual machines, or containers I have been working until now, namely VMWare and VMs, Kubernetes, or LXC; bare metal applications were a little bit strange to me, though with my existing background, I figured out what belongs where in almost no time. Ever since then, things have been only evolving and my engagement in all the projects I had so far has only helped me to get to the details faster and in detail.

Going forward, looking forward to working more and closer with both the Systems team in regards to the architecture we have and the Science team concerning the applications and their setup to know them better and help them out where possible and as soon as possible.

What is something you really want the research community at Northeastern to know about you, or about RC as a whole?

I like the expression optimizing and improving a lot. One really important thing we are doing here at RC is actually applying that in reality, in our environment: optimizing usage of our existing resources as well as trying to stay up to date as much as possible by getting new equipment. On top of that, we are striving to implement best practices in terms of RC by studying other institutions and learning from their experiences while keeping our own identity in mind. That’s what I’d like to underline RC within Northeastern and beyond as a whole center.

Do you have a go-to karaoke song? If yes, what is it, if no what would you choose to be your personal walk-up song every time you entered a room?

I like the space but not being in the space. Also, I am more of a tune person rather than songs themselves as they always fit anywhere and despite the type of activity I am on. So my go-to tunes or songs are the Interstellar movie soundtrack and especially the tick-tock one – a reminder of the time in a fantastic way and the music from Lars Leonhard – Deep in Space or Matteo Paladini – The Moon. But one of the music I also can listen to anywhere and everywhere and energizes me just like the ones above is Evanescence – Field of Innocence.

Have you read a book recently that you would recommend everyone read?

Not recently – no, but I like that the books about space and science as mostly what was science fiction back in the 90s are not fiction anymore, it’s such a transformation and sometimes scary.

What skill do you think everyone should have?

With these ever-changing technologies and science as a whole, it feels like every single person has to adapt to this challenging new era and the skill of life-long learning.

What was your first screenname?

sunrise or just khrshd were the ones I normally go by.