Francesc Alted Resumé

Experience

ironArray SL: October 2021 - Today

CEO. Developing libraries for overcoming the limits imposed by technology when computing with multidimensional arrays, specially where the memory bandwidth becomes a bottleneck. Expert in compression applied to storage and computation.
Blosc Development Team: May 2014 - Today

BDFL. Designing and coding libraries for extremley fast compression (C-Blosc2, Python-Blosc2) and for coping with large multidimensional datasets (Caterva, Caterva-Python).
University of Oslo: Consultant --- September 2016 - September 2018

Collaborating on performing large scale simulations of air pollutants via FLEXPART.
The HDF Group: Consultant -- August 2016 - December 2018

Working on support for filters for HDF5 and other projects.
University of Oslo: Data Consultant --- September 2014 - January 2016

Collaborating in the orchestration codebase for SHyFT, an OpenSource hydrological toolbox
UberResearch GmbH: Software Engineer --- September 2014 - April 2015

Python programming, profile and optimization of applications, database optimizations.
Continuum Analytics: Senior Software Engineer --- January 2012 - May 2014

Designing and coding libraries to cope with extremely large datasets (Blaze), specially in the I/O to memory and disk backends. Also involved in providing consulting services about handling big data for our customers.
BMAT: Software Engineer --- February 2011 - December 2011

My duties were to work in the database backend for music recognition software. Also, I was leading the participation of BMAT in the H4H project.
Universitat Jaume I:: Assistant professor (Physics) --- February 2010 - September 2011

Working part-time in teaching experimental physics as assistant lecturer.
PyTables: Software developer & consultant --- May 2008 - June 2011

Continue the work on designing and programming PyTables. Offering consulting and programming services in the field of management of large amounts of data and indexing engines.
Cárabos Cooperativa Valenciana: Executive Director --- April 2005 - April 2008

Working full-time for this company providing value-added software services for dealing with very large datasets with PyTables and others.
Universitat Jaume I:: Assistant professor (Physics) --- March 2003 - September 2005

Working part-time in teaching experimental physics as assistant professor.
PyTables: Software developer --- Aug 2002 - March 2005

Designing and programming PyTables, a hierarchical database for scientific purposes. Offering consulting and programming services in the field of management of large amounts of data.
OpenLC: Software developer --- Jun 2001 - Jun 2002

Designing and programming a new benchmark tool to test performance of a broad range of IT (Information Technology) services, like HTTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP4, LDAP...
Servicom2000
- System architect May 2000 - May 2001
Responsible for Servicom2000 IT systems. Lead team of system administrators and developers to set-up and maintain the servers for the Servicom2000 ISP services. Execution of consulting services in IT systems for clients.
- Technical director Jan 1999 - May 2000
Responsible of the technical department. My main work was to plan and coordinate the set-up and management for the Servicom2000 ISP and communications facilities. Making of technical proposals for different products, like IT services, Internet connectivity, security, database applications and e-commerce.
Servicom (Valencia branch office): Technical director --- Aug 1996 - Jan 1999

Lead team of people to create and operate the branch office infrastructure for the Servicom ISP, one of the biggest in Spain (then acquired by Retevision). Responsible for modeling a new product (color boxes) with integrated security, Intranet and Extranet services. Responsible for the project proposals to customers in areas like Internet connectivity (Cisco routers/Frame-Relay/ISDN, Linux/ISDN), security (Firewall-1, Gauntlet) and e-commerce applications (Perl, mSQL, mySQL, Java, Oracle, ...).
Universitat Jaume I: Scientific computing analyst --- Sep 1991 - Jul 1996

Responsible to establish the conditions for the public concurrence process in selecting the university general scientific computing facilities. Responsibility to select and execute the adequate benchmarks for the scientific community needs. Installation and management for libraries and programs in the scientific computer field. User support for compilers, debuggers, 3D visualization systems, computational tools (Mathematica), documentation systems (LaTeX). Scientific computing system administration. Experience with SGI (Power Challenge L and XL, Indigo workstations), HP-UX (cluster of 14 HP 730) and IBM (390, 590 models).
IFIC - Institut de Física Corpuscular (Universitat de València - CSIC)
- System administrator assistant for the computer center --- Jan 1991 - Jul 1991
Installation and management of scientific computing software and libraries in VMS (Digital) environments. User support for this tools. Programmer for some system utilities (logout users after some time of inactivity, filters for Postscript printers, ...). Assistance to the system administrator in labors like upgrading operating system in computer facilities, establishing backup policies, etc.
- Research fellowship holder --- Jan 1989 - Dec 1990
Participation in the research project "Collaboration in the DELPHI experiment in the colliding ring e+e- (LEP) of CERN". My task was mainly to help with the set-up of the data acquisition system for the ToF (Time of Flight) detector in DELPHI.

Education

Universitat Jaume I
- PhD student in Mathematical Methods --- 1996 - 2002 Thesis name "Application of the simplectic integrators to the study of Hamiltonian systems". Thesis advisor: Prof. F. Casas. Unconcluded.
- Master of Science in Mathematical Methods --- Finished in May 2002 This is an official recognition for the PhD courses followed and research trajectory.
Universitat de València
- PhD Student at IFIC ("Institut de Física Corpuscular") in València --- Jan 1989 - Dec 1990
Spent one year and half at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) working in the ToF (DELPHI experience) detector data acquisition system. Read "Tesi de Llicenciatura" named "The Data Acquisition System of the Time of Flight (ToF) Detector of DELPHI" in June 1990.
- Master of Science in “Electronics and Computer Sciences” and “Theoretical Physics” --- 1982 - 1988
Concluded both Masters in Physics studies.

Open Source Projects

Open source is one of my main interests and I create and maintain several projects:

Blosc: An extremely fast, multi-threaded, meta-compressor library

Blosc is more an umbrella for a series of projects:
- C-Blosc: The core library in C --- May 2009 - Today
- C-Blosc2: Next generation of Blosc --- July 2015 - Today
- python-blosc: High-performance wrappers for Python --- September 2010 - Today
- bcolz: A columnar data container that can be compressed --- August 2010 - Today
- Caterva: A multidimensional data container that can be compressed --- October 2018 - Today
- cat4py: A Pythonic wrapper for Caterva --- April 2019 - Today
PyTables: Hierarchical datasets in HDF5 --- May 2002 - Today
numexpr: Fast numerical array expression evaluator --- January 2009 - Today
ipython_memwatcher: Utility for watching memory consumption --- Jul 2015 - Today

Papers

Why Modern CPUs Are Starving and What Can Be Done about It. Computing in Science & Engineering, March/April, 2010.
Processing and Analyzing Extremely Large Amounts of Data (paper version). Presented at the PyCon 2003 conference, held in Washington DC, from 26th to 28th of March, 2003.
More than 20 articles in several scientific reviews, like “Physics Letters B”, “Nuclear Physics”, “Nuclear Instrumentation and Methods” and “Zeit. fur Physik”. Years 1990 and 1991.

Skills

More than 20 years working in software projects written mainly in Python and C. In them, the use of libraries for doing intensive I/O for general purposes has been stressed, as well as the design of innovative indexing systems. Several optimization techniques (memory access, SIMD, threading ...) for both Python and C have been extensively exercised in these projects.
Years of experience leading and managing working groups in IT technologies.
Systems administration. Years of experience with Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, Irix, and AIX. Used to NFS and SAN (Storage Area Network) environments. Experience with SMP (Symmetric multiprocessor) machines.
Large experience with IT system architecture designs, like SMTP, POP3, IMAP, LDAP, WEB, FTP, DNS, Instant Messaging, authentication servers, proxy-cache under UNIX systems.
Years of experience in scientific computing management. Installing and maintaining NQS, PVM, MPI, scientific packages and libraries (BLAS, LAPACK, ESSL, Mathematica, Gaussian, MOPAC, ...) in university scenarios.
Design and set-up of security systems, like TIS, Firewall-1, IP-chains, SOCKS, ...

Presentations

"Squeeze (gently) your data". Keynote presented at PyData Barcelona 2017, Barcelona, Spain (May 2017).
"HDF5 and pandas". Tutorial presented at the PyData Barcelona 2017, Barcelona, Spain (May 2017).
"Handling Big Data on Modern Computers: A Developer's View". Seminar given at Curtin University, Perth, Australia (August 2016).
"New Computer Trends And How This Affect Us". Keynote presented at PyData Madrid 2016, Madrid, Spain (April 2016).
"Usando contenedores para Big Data". Tutorial presented at the PyData Madrid 2016, Madrid, Spain (April 2016).
"Blosc/bcolz: Comprimiendo datos más allá de los límites de la memoria". Talk presented at PyConES 2015 conference (November 2015).
"Making Use of Big Data Containers". Tutorial presented at the PyConES 2015, Valencia, Spain (November 2015).
"New Trends In Storing Large Data Silos With Python". Talk given at EuroPython 2015, Bilbao, Spain (July 2015).
"Efficient memory/disk data containers with Python". Tutorial given at EuroPython 2015, Bilbao, Spain (July 2015).
"New Trends In Storing Large Data Silos With Python". Keynote presented at PyData Paris 2015, Paris, France (April 2015).
"Blosc: Sending data from memory to CPU (and back) faster tna memcpy()". Talk presented at PyData London 2014, London, UK (February 2014).
"Large Data Analysis with Python". Seminar given at the German Neuroinformatics Node, Munich, Germany (November 2010).
"Highly Efficient Computations In Python: Well Beyond NumPy". Tutorial given at EuroSciPy 2010 conference in Paris, France (July 2010).
"Starving CPUs (and coping with that in PyTables)". Seminar given at FOM Institute for Plasma Physics Rijnhuizen, The Netherlands (September 2009).
On The Data Access Issue (or Why Modern CPUs Are Starving). Keynote presented at EuroSciPy 2009 conference in Leipzig, Germany (July 2009).
"An Overview of Future Improvements to OPSI". Informal talk given at the THG headquarters in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA (October 2007).
"Finding Needles in a Huge DataStack". Talk given at the '''EuroPython 2006 Conference''', held at CERN, Genève, Switzerland (July 2006).
"PyTables Presentation" given at the '''HDF Workshop 2005''', held at San Francisco, USA (December 2005).
'''Workshop in Free Software and Scientific Computing''' given at the Universitat Jaume I, Castelló, Spain (October 2004).
'''SciPy Workshop 2004''', held at Caltech, Pasadena, USA (September 2004).
PyTables presentation given at '''EuroPython Conference''' in Charleroi, Belgium (June 2003).
PyTables presentation for the '''iParty5''' held at Castelló, Spain (May 2003). In Spanish.
Talk on PyTables given at the '''PyCon 2003 Convention''' held at Washington, USA (March 203).

Courses

Teacher in several schools on '''Advanced Programming in Python''', organized by the German Neuroinformatics Node:

Reports

White Paper on OPSI indexes, explaining the indexing engine in PyTables Pro.
Performance study on how the new object tree cache introduced in PyTables 1.2 can accelerate the opening of files with a large number of objects, while being quite less memory hungry.
Implementació optimitzada del paquet de química computacional Mopac 93 sobre arquitectures RISC" . November 1994.
Informe per al reemplaçament de la potència de càlcul de la Universitat Jaume I". May 1994.

Other interests

Mountain trekking, basketball, cinema, literature.

Republication without permission is forbidden.