Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32Meet Cody Permann, a modeling and simulation computer scientist at INL Education background: Master’s degree in computer science from University of Idaho, currently expecting to graduate with a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Idaho in May 2017 Job description: I’m currently the lead of the computational frameworks team. We build, maintain and support the software framework used for a wide variety of complex multiphysics simulations both internally at INL and externally by scientists and engineers from all around the world. What led you to become a computer scientist? I’ve always enjoyed tinkering with computers and electronics. My friends and I used to assemble computers from nothing but a case and a pile of components. I was always fascinated at the complexity of all the pieces and wanted to learn how they all worked. My best friend’s dad was an electrical engineer and had a full electronics bench at his house. I remember spending a lot of time playing with electrical components and building simple circuits on breadboards. We also played plenty of video games and learned how to write really simple programs in BASIC at the time. I signed up for a few electronics courses where I learned basic electrical engineering principles and also received hands-on experience assembling and disassembling computers. There weren’t any programming courses available in my high school, but I knew I wanted to learn how to program. I didn’t know if I should go into engineering, computer information systems or computer science until I started looking at the titles and descriptions of the courses for each major in the university course catalog. The required combination of classes with math, logic and programming in computer science really appealed to me, and the decision was easy to make. What do you love about your job? I enjoy the constant challenge of working with so many different people in so many diverse fields. It’s also fun working on a product that runs on the large cluster computer that the laboratory owns. Why is your work important to INL’s mission and the world? The work I do enables more complex modeling and higher fidelity simulations in studying all sorts of physical phenomena. The scientists and engineers we work with are able to use this information to build next-generation products that are more efficient and safer to power our nation and developing countries. What advice do you have for future computer scientists? My advice to students in this field is to get as much exposure to current and emerging technologies as you can. We are always looking for people who like to learn about and play with technologies on their own. It takes a lot of curiosity and excitement to stay current with the constant changes we see in the computing world. Learn and tinker with everything! Download a developer’s environment and build an app for your phone. Take an online programming course. Get involved in robotics. Just get involved! 7 $67,000 AVERAGE STARTING SALARY