Kenes Beketayev Graduate Student Research Assistant, Visualization Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2nd year Ph.D. student, Department of Computer Science, University of California, Davis Lawrence Berkeley National Lab 1 Cyclotron Road, Mailstop 50F1650 Berkeley, CA 94720-8139 Email: kbeketayev (at) lbl.gov (Please replace the "(at)" appropriately.) Phone: +1-510-486-5699 Fax: +1-510-486-5812 My current research interest is topological methods for data analysis and visualization. Also I have extended interest in several related fields, e.g. parallelizability of algorithms for large datasets (CUDA, OpenMP), data mining and feature extraction, image processing.

Short Biography

Kenes Beketayev received his Engineer Specialist degree in Information Systems with honors in May 2008 from Kazakh-British Technical University, Almaty, Kazakhstan and B.S. Degree in Computer Science in September 2007 from Northwestern Polytechnic University, Fremont, CA, USA. Before that he graduated from National Special Physics-Mathematics High School with honors and "Intellectual Leader of Class'03" title.

He worked in several companies (KazInterCom, Schlumberger, PINC Solutions, etc) between March 2001 until September 2008, and acumulated experience in web- and software programming, team work, project management and enterpreneurship. He co-founded two startups in Kazakhstan, both in an education technology.

He started doing research in Jan 2004 under the guidance of Prof. Anuar Dusembaev. Goal was to use theory of recognition for medical monitoring of patients in intensive care. Project was supported by National Research Institute of Cardiology. Results were reported in several scientific conferences. After arrival to USA, he started working with Dr. Mervyn Wong, Dr. Jeffrey Neaton and others at LBNL, where he participated in several projects, including the recent project on "Lanscapes" (see Projects section). In September 2008 he entered Ph.D. program in Computer Science, where he works under supervision of Dr. Bernd Hamann, focusing on topology-based methods for visualization and data analysis of a noisy, large-scale scientific data.

Current (and Past) Projects

• Currently I'm working on "Landscapes" project. Specifically, I'm working on algorithm that will construct contour tree in a space with arbitrary dimensionality and build topological landscapes. As an application, algorithm should be useful to analyse data from chemical experiments and optimization simulations.
• "Nano-Plasmonic Bowtie Antenna Simulator", Theory Group, Molecular Foundry, LBNL. This project's main goal was to build good electromagnetic model for botwie antenna simulation for Network for Computational Nanotechnology and local, more sophisticated version for internal use.
• STXM Motion Control Optimization, BL 11.0.2, ALS, LBNL. This project aimed to reimplement motion control system, which required revision of both components: physical and algorithmic.

Teaching

I was TA for CS201 Data Structures in Summer'07, working with Prof. Ken Cheung and ECS30 Introduction to Problem Solving in Winter'09, working with Mr. Sean Davis. In both classes I leaded discussions, conducted lab sessions and graded homeworks, midterms and finals.

Other

• Volunteering at Bay Area Technology School makes me happy - exactly kind of thing you need to stay motivated throughout the workweek. Everybody is strongly advised to try sometime.
• I'm currently helping my alma-mater (KBTU) to establish basic research in Computer Science. Several alumni, including me, are working on proposals for Parallel Laboratory and Visualization Laboratory. Please, feel free to join and/or do some advising.
• I'm involved in several projects conducted by Kazakhstani government. Main idea behind all of them - to help people and country to advance their knowledge in innovative technology and science. This partially fits my science and education advisory appointment at embassy.
• Among different things I enjoyed to do: tennis (junior league of Kazakhstan), soccer (champion of high school, vice-champion of university), guitar and drums (always wanted to learn professionally, but never got a chance), gaming (Starcraft, DOTA, Left4Dead).