Kris Stewart Watching the Internet Grow Up (1969-2023) - upd2

Who am I - Kris Stewart stewart.sdsu.edu

I was born a Marine Corps brat and grew up in an interesting world due to my father's career as a Marine. We moved every 2 or 3 years, so I got used to figuring things out - sometimes reinventing myself. I always liked math and was willing to work hard at continuing to learn.

Education & Profession

• 4th-6th grade, Prairie Village KS, separate math teacher
• 8th grade, MCAS Quantico - formal typing course / with covered keys; useful skill in academia for jobs
• 10-12th VHS, pre-calc, but didn't help for Math 2a, UCSD 1969 Fall Quarter
• Fall'69-Spr-73 UCSD BA in Math, no English req, APIS for Science requirement - Burroughs B6500 mainframe Algol assembler code
• 1977-79 SDSU Masters CS
  • Took Math 693, Numerical Analysis: A Second Course, James Ortega, taught by Math Prof Jim Ross - math & computi9ng - LOVED IT
  • NA involves solving systems of linear equations, Ax=b; approximating the solution of 2D differential equations, orbits, x(t) and y(t) represent position in the plane, an ODE; approximating solution of integral from A to B of a given function; and much more
  • 1977 used IBM 360 mainframe computer Fortran coding using punch cards for program input
  • Fall'77-Spr'78 Build IMSAI 8080 8-bit microcomputer kit w socket for Intel 8087 floating pt chip, S-100 bus (clone of Altair 8800 and Radio Shack TRS80); CP/M OS; cassette tape for long-term memory; acoustic coupler modem to access timeshare CDC Cyber 173 access, Fortran code
  • SCRUNCH - Recode in BASIC, NA software from Fortran - Forsythe, Malcolm & Moler; study performance on my 8 bit computer
  • Nov '77 ACM SIGNUM/SIAM conference Albuquerque NM, Mac Hyman of LANL tells me of DoE lab summer internship programs
  • Summer '78 Internship Sandia National Labs with Dr. Larry Shampine, got Q Clearance, coding in Fortran on CDC system, numerical experiments on Lipschitz constants for ODEs, Ordinary Differential Equations
  • Fall '78 SDSU - have access to Calstate CDC Cyber 173 timesharing system, BITNET, qb30087 my ID
  • Needed at home separate ATT phone line for modem - unlimited time, free ?7p - 7a
  • Apr '79 SIGNUM ODE Methods Conference, UIUC; met Fred Krogh of JPL, based on masters project, encourages me to apply JPL

  NOTE, all computers are isolated, nothing shared electronically except to other users with authorized logon to same computer system

• 1979-1981 Jet Propulsion Lab, Applied Math Programming group, library maintenance; UNIVAC computer
  • Coding in Fortran on Univac, machine chosen for its ability to represent wide range of numeric values in floating point.
  • Ed Ng in our group had an Arpanet account
  • NBS, National Bureau of Standards, David Kahaner, invited me to present & include SCRUNCH in GAMS, their online archive - anonymous FTP

• 1981-87 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, PhD Applied Math / Computer Science
• 1984 SDSU Mathematical Sciences Department offers me Tenure Track Assistant Prof of Numerical Analysis position
• Tenure track means evaluated based on Research, Teaching, Service - NOT EQUALLY weighted
• Timeshare compute system with Xterminal Lab BA110 for classes & research
• have email - stewart@sdsu.edu and campus tech support to keep systems running. Of course I have home computer - IBM 8086/8087 PC running DOS, which I maintain. ATT provides home network access, CAT5 cable plugs into PC

1985 National Science Foundation establishes Supercomputer Centers Program

As a Numerical Analyst at SDSU, I was very interested in how to get access to Big Iron

1984 I call back to NSF in Washington D.C. and learn of planned Supercomputer Centers starting 1985. This was based on the December 1982 Lax Report "Report of the Panel on Large Scale Computing in Science and Engineering" pdf; available online https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/images/lax_report_1982.pdf

• The Cornell Theory Center (CTC) at Cornell University,
• The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
• The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh,
• The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego,
• The John von Neumann Center at Princeton University

"From Supercomputing to the Teragrid" https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=106875 pdf 19April2006 - provides easy to read overview

SDSC timeline (jpg) 1985 - 2010; note 1995 Tsutomu Shimonura & 1997 NPACI; SDSC 30 yrs 1985-2014 pdf

1984 - 2013 Learning to "play the game" in academia

• Teaching Numerical Analysis was my life! I loved being in a Math Sciences Department, with Math, Applied Math, Computer Science, Math Education & Statistics as separate groups of faculty, teaching classes - but all classes listed in the catalog as Math XXX.
• My view of NA is 50% Applied Math and 50% Computer Sciences. The algorithms and their analysis may predict computational behavior, but you must implement the algorithm in code, run on a specific computer and measure performance to truly understand the concept.
• 1986 applied and was accepted to attend SDSC first Summer Institute, to learn how to use the Cray XMP and get access to NSFNET, Cray XMP was a shared-memory parallel vector processor, 64-bit word, 60 word registers, proprietary operating system.
• SDSC saw the value in me being a woman and being in the room.
• 1990 tenure at SDSU, fyi May 1987 defended PhD Dissertation UNM, ABQ
• 1990-2 SDSC writes grants to NSF supportting me during summers to develop curricula in undergraduate supercomputing at SDSU and give workshops to CSU faculty (fyi, counts as "service" in my SDSU campus evals)
• 1993-96 SDSC writes grants to NSF supporting me during summers to develop program for teams of high school science teachers to spend a few weeks at SDSC during their summers to learn what HPCC, High Performance Computing and Communications, means for them. Focus - Supercomputing '95 will be in San Diego Dec '95 and Sid Karin is Chair, want to help teachers make progress over 3 years. All materials available online, via anonymous FTP, from SDSC.

Spr 1994 My faculty web page starts, first on campus. Been a useful way to keep track of my life.

IT staff said I was "punching a hole" in our protective campus border firewall!

• Oct 1997 NPACI partnership begins - Enhancing Undergraduate Curriculum. Representing SDSU and the CSU, I have funding for a lab with staff and computers on campus to support undergraduate computational science curriculum development and dissemination.
• Feb 1998 SDSU joins the vBNS - Kris Stewart is co-PI for campus access to Internet2, high speed internet. Challenge is to encourage campus faculty to see the value of high speed Internet. Astronomy Dept was an easy sell cause Dr. Paul Etzel had to write data at Mt Laguna Observatory to magnetic tape, then drive to campus to process his observations.

09 Jan 2007 Steve Jobs presents the iPhone at Macworld CNET report Steve Jobs pdf

2012 Thanks Tim - Opening Ceremonies London Olympics pdf or TEDtalks Summary pdf

I retired May 2013 after 29 years at SDSU, wanted to join celebration of 50th anniversary of JFK coming to SDSU to give commencement address, 06June1963. pdf mp4

2023 we have ting, high speed fiber to our home [1000 Mbps download and upload speeds, Unlimited data, Connect 20+ devices seamlessly, $89 per month]; MintMobile, for our two mobile phones; and Starlink Mobility for high performance networking when on the road with our rig Vivian.

back to Kris' home page