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), where I worked on all sorts of things: the National Research Platform (NRP) Kubernetes substrate and its FABRIC integration, the SENSE Kubernetes operator, segment routing on FPGAs, CUDA tooling, Prometheus exporters for novel chips, and P4 with machine learning on SmartNICs. 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