Applicant: Martin Brown

Department: Computer Science

Date: February 1, 2010

I will be an excellent PhD student that will walk across the stage to be awarded with a
PhD in computer science. I will then become a university professor researching in high
performance computing. It will be done through hard work and dedication because of my
strong work ethic and the desire to achieve these goals. I aspire to this because of
my strong passion for computer science and information technology. It started when my
older brother taught me programming basics in Visual Basic while I was in high school. I
then created a more attractive and user-friendly Tic-tac-toe game than his version, which
sparked my interest even more. New technologies in computer science can easily excite
me, whether hardware or software. I love experimenting with new operating systems, test
driving new tools, and coming up with solutions to computer-related issues. I learn new
programming languages, introduce my friends to cool new software, and stay up to date
on technology. I am committed to Computer Science!

Looking back, I have always been a top performer. As a result, I have been tutoring since
the second grade. The title became official when I was employed by Florida A&M
University as a tutor for the Department of Computer Information Systems. Sharing
knowledge and helping others improve their skills is something that I truly enjoy. It’s
rewarding enough to see the results of my efforts in the advancement of others. It’s also a
benefit to me because it helps me to retain what I’ve learned and continue developing my
own skills and knowledge of the subject area.

Since the fall of 2009 I was assigned the more challenging task of being a teaching
assistant for Fundamentals of Programming Lab. The vast number of students in the class
makes it a demanding position, but that’s what makes it exciting! I grade assignments and
exams and determine areas where each student can improve. During lab assignments I
assist in the development of their coding, debugging, and pair programming skills. I am
faced with many different challenges from student to student, but my professionalism and
respect for them goes a long way in them having respect for me as well. I really have a
passion for teaching that I would love to utilize when I become a university professor.

I believe that lectures should be an enjoyable experience for both teacher and student. My
passion for presenting was developed when I became the Sun Microsystems Campus
Ambassador at Florida A&M University. I love giving presentations on topics such as
NetBeans, OpenSolaris, Java, and new technologies such as JavaFX. Because of the
challenge of keeping the audience’s attention, I researched techniques to improve my
presentation skills. I joined the bullet-free story presentation revolution and began to
unlock the visual power of communication. It has made a huge difference in my
presentations that followed. It has helped me to grab and keep the audience’s attention,
and applauds and accolades soon followed: “Great presentation Martin!” I have even
been able to attract the attention of business majors during technical presentations.
My interest in parallel computing stems from the Introduction to Parallel Programming
course taught by Dr. Hongmei Chi in fall of 2008. The course was exciting, challenging
and priceless despite the anachronism of my single-core laptop. We wrote our programs
on an eight-core cluster and learned how to program in C using MPI. Furthermore, we
were taught architectures and models of parallel computation, parallel algorithms and
techniques, and parallel programming issues. I was the only student to complete the
complex extra credit assignment that required us to parallelize the Gaussian Elimination
algorithm. For my term project, I parallelized the test harness of the triangle classification
program. I simulated the testing of a large-scale data application by using a large number
of synthetic test cases, forcing the experiment to run for tens of seconds. Consequently, I
was able to compare the performance of the test harness being executed using a different
number of processors. I was impressed to see near-parallel performance gains in using
more cores. My work resulted in the paper “A Simulation of Parallel Testing for Large-
scale Data Applications“, which earned me first place at the ADMI 2009 Symposium on
Computing at Minority Institutions. It has inspired my master’s thesis research, and my
desire is to continue in the field of high performance computing; I absolutely love it!

I was accepted to attend the 2009 High Performance Systems (CHiPS) Mentoring
Workshop where I heard Dr. Marc Snir and other pioneers such as Intel, MIT, and
Northeastern University speak. We also completed a practical GPU programming
exercise. These events inspired me to continue research in this field. I then attended the
surreal Supercomputing 2009 conference three months later. It was by far the best
conference I’ve ever been to. The number of companies and universities on the exhibit
floor enthralled me. Despite my sore feet, I explored the exhibit every day, asked the
many participants questions about their products and research, and felt like I was in a
different world. I confirmed it; this is the future of computing. It is an exciting field that
has opened up endless opportunities for groundbreaking research, undeniably, absolutely
something that I want to be a part of.

I am extremely interested in working with Dr. Edgar Gabriel in the Parallel Software
Technologies Laboratory and Dr. Barbara Chapman in the High Performance Computing
and Tools Research Group. I hope that my background, credentials, and enthusiasm are
what the Computer Science Department at the University of Houston is seeking in a PhD
student.