Ben Nathanson
AACR Scientist-Survivor Program at American Association for Cancer Research
New Jersey, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolBen Nathanson is a former IBM senior engineer turned prostate cancer patient advocate who combines deep systems engineering experience with nonprofit and scientific community engagement. Over a 35-year engineering career he helped design and verify the IBM Blue Gene supercomputers and authored tens of thousands of lines of C++ verification code, earning multiple technical awards and team recognition. Since 2020 he has channeled that analytical rigor into patient support, co-moderating a large weekly video support group, serving as a consumer grant reviewer, and contributing to professional guideline panels and AACR’s Scientist-Survivor program. He also writes the Substack "Progressions," translating complex clinical and research developments into accessible insights for patients and caregivers. In open source he has improved critical scientific computing documentation for numpy, demonstrating attention to clarity and reproducibility beyond his hardware roots. Based in New Jersey, he bridges technical fluency and lived experience to influence research, policy, and patient education.
9 years of coding experience
35 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science (MS), Electrical Engineering, Master of Science (MS), Electrical Engineering at Columbia University - Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
0questions
Github Skills (4)
restructuredtext10
documentation10
sphinx9
python7
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
numpy/numpy
May 2020 - Oct 2020
The fundamental package for scientific computing with Python.
Role in this project:
Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:83 reviews, 67 commits, 41 PRs in 4 months
Contributions summary:Ben primarily contributed to the NumPy project through extensive documentation updates. They focused on improving the clarity, accuracy, and organization of the documentation, including revising the glossary, updating how-to guides, and correcting broken links. Their work included incorporating contributions from others, streamlining the documentation process, and ensuring consistency with the project's style guidelines and standards.
pythonscientific-computingnumpy
bjnath/season_of_docs_2020
Apr 2020 - Nov 2021
Contributions:15 PRs, 60 pushes, 11 branches in 1 year 7 months
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