Walid Abu Al-Afia

I'm a

About

I am a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Hailing from Amman, Jordan, I graduated from Rhodes College in May 2023, and I have dedicated my knowledge to the betterment of High-Performance Computing systems ever since.

HPC & Computational Engineer.

My love for HPC and Systems Programming began at an early stage in my career. Ever since I took Operating Systems, I knew exactly where I wanted to invest my time in computing. If you're an early career professional and are interested in getting into HPC, please feel free to contact me at any of the means below.

  • Birthday: 1 Feb 2001
  • Website: www.abualafia.com
  • Phone: +901 921 4305
  • City: Memphis, TN
  • Age: 23
  • Degree: Bachelor
  • Email: walid@lavabit.com
  • Favorite Language: C/C++

I am seeking research-oriented opportunities that study compilers. My research interests lie in performance-efficient parallel compilers. Although we are at an advanced stage of computing, we often notice how compilation time is a persistent bottleneck. Why compilers take a long time to compile is a problem that interests me, and I want to make compilers faster. If you know of PhD programs studying compilers/compiler design, please forward me the opprtunity.

TL;DR

A quick checksum about the important things one would need to know about me:

Multilingual Arabic, English fluently. Spanish, French limited working proficiency

Long-term Programmer programmed daily for 6+ years

Years of Experience professionally working/interning

Programming Languages proficient in more than 12 programming languages

Skills

Given the nature of my work, I am scripting in Bash and Python for the better part of my day. I spend the rest of the day compiling C/C++/R applications on our systems. I also manage the centralized installations of each of these programming languages, giving me both a user/administrator understanding.

Python 100%
Bash 95%
C/C++ 95%
R 85%
Java 80%
GO 65%

Resume

You can find my resume in an easy-to-read webpage form below. A downloadable PDF version will be added to the website by February.

Summary

Walid Abu Al-Afia

Innovative and deadline-driven Computational Engineer with 2+ years of experience developing and compiling state-of-the-art parallel programs for Healthcare HPC applications.

  • 1350 Concourse Ave, Memphis TN
  • (901) 921-4305
  • walid@lavabit.com

Education

Bachelor of Science - Computer Science

2019 - 2023

Rhodes College, Memphis, TN

Magna Cum Laude, Joseph Reeves Hyde Award recipient. Inducted to honor societies: Upsilon Pi Epsilon, Theta Kappa Alpha, ACM/IEEE.

High School Diploma

2015 - 2019

King's Academy, Manja-Madaba, JOR

Graduated with highest honors. Co-president of the Student Leadership Council, Head Organizer of KA-Model United Nations. Completed 10 AP courses & exams.

Professional Experience

Computational Engineer I

2023 - Present

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN

  • Fully implemented and maintains Open OnDemand instance for St. Jude HPC.
  • Handles all software/module installs on the cluster (RHEL7/RHEL8)
  • Organizes and teaches seminars on HPC programming tools (Conda, containerization...)
  • Optimizes/debugs parallel programs and helps researchers write scalable software

HPC Engineer - Student

2022 - 2023

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN

  • Built a metrics collection development environment utilizing a prometheus data source
  • Used Grafana dashboards to visualize metrics
  • Built and deployed a REST API endpoint running a renowned protein-protein complex structure prediction algorithm
  • Compiled documentation and knowledge base articles for other engineers on how to deploy endpoints to St. Jude’s in-house HPC clusters

Portfolio

This section highlights my public GitHub projects that I have built over the years. Other projects, including an implementation of the Raft Algorithm and the MapReduce Algorithm on a per-request basis.

Services

Although most of my programming efforts are now dedicated towards my job, I spend some time on the side developing some of my interests.

Project Development

I enjoy full-stack programming. If you have any porject ideas that you would like to build and need a developer, please feel free to contact me.

Linux Environment Customization

One of my main hobbies is maintaining a repo with various custom configurations (sh, tmux, vim...). If you are interested in a custom solution, please feel free to reach out.

Helping Students Break into Tech

I am passionate about helping talented students break into tech. If you're a recent graduate, I'm happy to run mock interviews/review application your materials.

Terminal

This is a simple terminal that allows you to get my info interactively.

Contact

You can contact me by any of the means listed below. If you'd like a faster response, please message me on LinkedIn. Links to my LinkedIn and GitHub pages are in the sidebar.

Location:

1350 Concourse Ave, Memphis, TN 38104

Call:

+1 (901) 921-4305