Hi! #

I’m Saeid, a software engineer at the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) headquarters near Manchester, UK. SKAO is set out to build the world’s largest radio telescope, with interferometry between many dishes and antennas in South Africa and Australia.

Before joining SKAO, I was an AI/HPC engineer at the Institute of Research and Technological Innovation (RIT) at Area Science Park in Trieste, Italy, while being a research assistance professor at the College of Science and Technology (CST) of Temple University in Philadelphia, USA, which the H1B Visa process for never went through. While I was in Trieste I also worked as an HPC consultant and as an HPC application expert at The Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP).

I specialize in high-performance computing, parallel programming, and scientific computing, focusing on developing and optimizing large-scale computational software for scientific research. I studied Physics at Isfahan University of Technology(IUT) before completing a Master’s in Physics and Astronomy at Sharif University of Technology (SUT) in Tehran, Iran. My research thesis was focused on general relativistic effects on cosmological observables and their behavior on the past light cone, combining theoretical and computational physics methods. This work led me to pursue the Master’s in High-Performance Computing (MHPC) at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, with funding from ICTP, where I worked on the GPU implementation of a computational fluid dynamics solver based on lattice Boltzmann methods, scaling it to run on 1024 A100 NVIDIA GPUs on one of the world’s largest supercomputers, Leonardo in Italy.

Current work #

SKA is one of the biggest and most ambitious scientific endeavors in history. At full operational scale, it will produce 50 times more data than that of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Processing at such immense rates will require innovative algorithms, new computational techniques, and cutting-edge infrastructure. This isn’t a mere technological challenge, but an opportunity to reshape how we process, analyze, and interpret scientific data in the modern era. One of our biggest goals is to enable scientists and researchers around the world to make use of these datasets as smoothly as possible.

SKA will enable breakthroughs in observing the early universe with 21cm radio signals emitted from hydrogen atoms, just 300,000 years after the Big Bang. We’ll be able to study the formation and evolution of the first stars and galaxies, investigate the nature of dark energy and dark matter, detect and study pulsars and black holes at an unprecedented rate and precision, and search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, to name a few.

The opportunity to contribute to such groundbreaking scientific research is intriguing, to say the least. It’s not just about solving complex engineering problems but enabling humanity to explore the cosmos in ways and scales we’ve never been able to before.

Ping me at: saeid.aliei@gmail.com.