Optimization

Choose your life partner wisely, friends. I sure did. 

My husband and I have both been working from home for a couple weeks, and as hard as it is for me to stay home so much, I'll admit, spending my workdays in close proximity to a robotics engineer has certain benefits. Take computer science, for example.

As you know, I've recently been working to design a model that simulates how fouling communities undergo succession. I successfully simulated recruitment of different species and made them die off when the temperatures got too hot, but I was having a hard time making them grow. One problem was that my model took so long to run, I had to wait a good 10 minutes each time just to know if my latest tweak had worked. At that rate, generating 1,000 simulated datasets for 4 different models and 5 experimental treatments was going to have my computer running for over 3 years. It was untenable. I was probably going to have to learn how to use my institution's high-performance computing cluster, I complained to Carl, which I was not looking forward to. He just shook his head and said, "Bring me your computer."

With my laptop in hand, Carl started running the model and then opened the task manager to check the performance of the central processing unit. It wasn't overtaxed, he said, so the model was not too big for my computer to handle. The cluster wouldn't help much. Instead, I should re-code the model to be more efficient. 

We spent a good half hour brainstorming alternate ways to code overgrowth of fouling species, and then it took me another day or two to really get it working. In the end, I got the model down from over 10 minutes per replicate to just over one minute. Generating all the simulated data I need will take just 2 weeks. It works brilliantly now!

I've run the more efficient model several times and am getting good results. After so much toiling and tweaking, I'm excited to see my model successfully simulating the data that I need. 

I'm definitely grateful for my husband - dive buddy, travel partner, personal chef, best friend, and tech support, all in one! Choose your life partner wisely.