The short version

I'm a research networking systems engineer at ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where I work on moving high-energy physics data across the country — software-defined networks for science, SENSE orchestration, and the interop between the transfer tools researchers actually use.

Before ESnet I was at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (UC San Diego): lead for the SEAM project, builder on the National Research Platform (NRP) Kubernetes substrate and its FABRIC integration, and developer of the SENSE Kubernetes operator. I'm also a three-PEARC-poster-and-paper person — most recently PEARC '26 (LLMs or Naive Bayes?) — and an instructor for SDSC's NRP courses.

What I care about

• Infrastructure people can actually use. A platform that needs a handbook to join isn't finished; it's in beta.
• Programmable data planes. I've spent real hours compiling P4 to FPGAs and I'd do it again.
• Honest measurements. If you're going to compare models (or networks, or clusters), publish the method.
• Teaching. You don't understand a system until you've explained it to someone who doesn't care about your system.

Off the clock

Baseball analytics in R (a permanently in-progress WAR calculator), machine-learning image experiments, competitive-programming warmups, and a long-standing belief that every big idea deserves a small weekend prototype.

Find me

GitHub: github.com/groundsada · LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/msada · Papers: arXiv