Kenneth Lyons
Research Aerospace Engineer at NASA Ames Research Center
Davis, California, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolKenneth Lyons is a Research Aerospace Engineer with 14 years of hands-on experience bridging numerical computing, embedded systems, and scientific software development. Based in Davis, CA, he builds high-performance data pipelines and modernizes legacy aeronautics code—most recently developing distributed-memory processing for pressure-sensitive paint analysis at NASA Ames and bringing automatic differentiation to Fortran design tools. He combines embedded firmware and hardware verification experience from avionics projects (DO-254/FPGA, IMU firmware) with full-stack contributions to prominent open-source scientific libraries like SymPy and pyqtgraph. Curious and methodical, he gravitates toward practical innovations that simplify complex experimental workflows, such as high-throughput camera-to-HPC data transfer and novel steady-state pressure measurement methods. His background in human-subject EMG interfaces and teaching shows an unusual blend of neuroscience-adjacent research, educational outreach, and production-grade engineering.
14 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at University of California, Davis
Github Skills (14)
c1710
debug10
computer-algebra10
code-generation10
visualization10
visualizations10
c1110
qt10
front-end-development10
python10
numpy10
testing10
mathematica9
math9
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
pyqtgraph/pyqtgraph
Oct 2022 - Oct 2022
Fast data visualization and GUI tools for scientific / engineering applications
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:68 reviews, 2 commits, 102 PRs in 1 day
Contributions summary:Kenneth made several commits focused on improving the pyqtgraph library's functionality and user experience. Their contributions included enhancements to the OpenGL and GUI widgets, as demonstrated by the background color changes and the inclusion of table widget key press event support. They fixed bugs, such as the one in `makeARGB`, and improved code readability. The user's contributions also included documentation updates and test coverage for improved functionality.
pythonnumpydata-and-visualizationguiengineering
sympy/sympy
Jun 2017 - Jul 2017
A computer algebra system written in pure Python
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:15 commits, 3 PRs, 11 comments in 13 days
Contributions summary:Kenneth contributed to the SymPy project by enhancing the code generation capabilities. Their work involved allowing customization of the code generation class, improving the custom preprocessor statement interface, and adding a codegen test. The user also addressed issues in the existing code generation process and included refactoring to improve efficiency.
mathpythonsciencecomputer-algebra-systemalgebra
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