Mason Protter
Scientific Software Development Collaborator
Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMason Protter is a scientific software developer with nine years of experience applying numerical algorithms and Julia expertise to accelerate research-grade simulations. Currently collaborating with Neuroblox, he helps design software architectures that speed up neurobiological model simulation, drawing on a PhD in condensed matter physics from the University of Alberta. A prolific open-source contributor, Mason has improved core Julia projects—adding efficient polynomial evaluation, refactoring ITensors.jl’s core Index structure, and enhancing symbolic simplification rules in SymbolicUtils.jl—work that surfaces in widely used libraries and the Julia language itself. He combines rigorous mathematical grounding with practical engineering: writing tests and docstrings, optimizing data structures, and translating complex algorithms into maintainable code. Notably, his contributions often focus on internal quality and usability improvements that make advanced scientific tooling more approachable for other researchers.
8 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Condensed Matter Physics, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Condensed Matter Physics at University of AlbertaBachelor of Science - BS, Physics, Bachelor of Science - BS, Physics at Simon Fraser University
Github Skills (25)
programming-language10
decomposition10
testing10
tensorrt10
pattern-matching10
math10
maths10
math-functions10
language-design10
tensorflow10
neural-network10
rewrite-rules10
tensor10
linear-algebra10
julia10
Programming languages (19)
Github contributions (5)
JuliaSymbolics/SymbolicUtils.jl
Feb 2020 - Oct 2021
Symbolic expressions, rewriting and simplification
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:5 releases, 7 reviews, 110 commits in 1 year 7 months
Contributions summary:Mason primarily contributed to the development of symbolic manipulation utilities, implementing and refining rule sets for symbolic expressions. Their work included adding trigonometric rules, fixing issues with existing rules, and converting rules to associative-commutative (AC) rules for more efficient simplification. The user also refactored the simplification pipeline and created test cases for the new functionalities.
casroot-findingsymbolic-computationcalculusdifferentiation
JuliaLang/julia
Jun 2018 - Sep 2022
The Julia Programming Language
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Test Automation Engineer
Back-end Developer & Test Automation EngineerContributions:74 reviews, 16 commits, 55 PRs in 4 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Mason primarily contributed to the Julia programming language, focusing on adding and modifying core mathematical functions and language features. They implemented an `evalpoly` function for efficient polynomial evaluation, including specialized versions for complex numbers. They also added functionality for `UniformScaling` matrices and implemented tests for various functions, including those related to sparse matrix operations and broadcasting. Additionally, the user fixed and enhanced existing code, such as with the `last` and `iterate` methods.
sciencejulia-languagemachine-learningjulialangpetsc
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