Peter Doak
Scientific Software Engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Knoxville, Tennessee, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolPeter Doak is a Scientific Software Engineer with a decade of experience blending condensed matter theory and high-performance software development, currently at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He holds a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from UC Berkeley and applies that deep domain knowledge to build and maintain production-grade scientific codes, notably contributing backend fixes and test improvements to the GPU-enabled QMCPACK quantum Monte Carlo project. Skilled in C++, Python, R, HPC, and build automation, he also improves scientific software distribution as a Spack contributor and release/build engineer. Peter’s profile combines rigorous theoretical training with hands-on systems engineering—he routinely diagnoses memory and data-structure issues in large codebases and integrates cross-branch changes for long-lived projects. Based in Knoxville, Tennessee, he brings an uncommon mix of academic depth and practical maintenance expertise that keeps critical open-source scientific tools reliable at scale.
10 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Physical Chemistry, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Physical Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
0questions
Github Skills (19)
debugging10
debug10
maintenance10
c-language10
package-management10
python10
code-cleanup10
build-tools10
cprogramming-language10
testing9
autotools9
linux9
performance-optimization9
scientific-computing8
cmake8
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
QMCPACK/qmcpack
Feb 2018 - Jan 2023
Main repository for QMCPACK, an open-source production level many-body ab initio Quantum Monte Carlo code for computing the electronic structure of atoms, molecules, and solids with full performance portable GPU support
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Code Maintainer
Back-end Developer & Code MaintainerContributions:1020 reviews, 1331 commits, 371 PRs in 4 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Peter primarily addressed access violations and logical errors within the QMCPACK code, specifically focusing on issues related to ion references and data structures. They merged in code from other branches, suggesting integration and code maintenance tasks. The user also improved test cases for the code base.
quantum-monte-carlompiatomsgpu-supportc-plus-plus
spack/spack
Nov 2016 - Feb 2019
A flexible package manager that supports multiple versions, configurations, platforms, and compilers.
Role in this project:Automation Engineer / Build & Release Engineer
Automation Engineer / Build & Release EngineerContributions:5 commits, 14 PRs, 18 comments in 2 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Peter's contributions primarily focus on modifying and extending the Spack package manager, adding and updating package definitions. This involves creating and updating build configurations for various software packages such as Nmap, CVS, and Emacs. Furthermore, the user has updated repository URLs and added the latest version of Pixman, indicating a focus on maintaining and improving package availability and build processes.
compilerspythonradiussplatformslinux
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