Matt Lebofsky: Resume (last updated December 2014)

Introductory Statement:

I am an active computer nerd and musician. For over 15 years I have worked on the world's largest supercomputing project (SETI@home), as developer/programmer (software/services used by millions of people worldwide), webmaster (sites getting 2,000,000 hits/day), database administrator (several databases terabytes in size, containing billions of rows and handling 30,000 queries/second), and systems administrator (a server complex containing over 300 CPUs and 1 petabyte of raw disk space). At night I perform/compose/arrange/record for a half-dozen active musical projects, playing keyboards, bass, guitar, drums, saxophone, and singing. Keeping a worldwide volunteer computing project running 24/7 while adhering to busy recording/rehearsal schedules and regularly performing live at weddings, corporate parties, small dive bars and large music halls involves major time/stress management and seat-of-your-pants problem solving which I find oddly entertaining. I am always looking to combine my diverse skill sets in new and inventive ways.

Computing Experience:

Information Systems Analyst (February 1994 - present) - Space Sciences Laboratory - University of California at Berkeley

I am a scientific programmer (mostly C++), systems/network manager (mostly linux server environment), webmaster (apache/php), and database administrator (mysql/informix) for various projects at the lab. My main focus has been on the world's largest volunteer computing project BOINC, which serves several scientific endeavors around the world, including SETI@home, which allows the public to search for extraterrestrial intelligence by hunting for signals in astronomical data using the power of their home computers. I am one of the original and current developers of SETI@home, which is still performing one of the largest computing tasks in the world to date. I am also a scientific programmer for another Berkeley SETI project, SERENDIP, and once served as network administrator for the Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer (CHIPS) NASA UNEX mission. I have advised/assisted several other projects in a technical context throughout the lab.

Other Computing Skills/Experience:

• Developed a fully functional open source web-based network/database monitoring and alert system (distributed as part of BOINC).
• Maintaining a technical discussion forum for the serious SETI@home nerds, including writing an almost-daily news report regarding the geeky behind-the-scenes details of the project.
• Freelance - PHP/perl scripting, database programming for several commercial web sites.
• iPhone application development
• Commodore Pet / Apple II - hobby/game/shareware programming from 1978-1987 (BASIC, machine language).
• Commodore Amiga - used exclusively for computer animation/music recording from 1987-1992.

Music Experience:

All Around Music Guy (July 1970 - present)

I play keyboards, guitar, bass, drums, saxophone and/or sing in various indie-rock/avant-garde/jazz/cover bands. Formal training includes classical/jazz piano, jazz bass, sound recording/engineering, advanced music theory and modern composition. Extensive knowledge of unorthodox music theory, record collecting, survival on the road with little money or hope. Composed thousands of works of all shapes and sizes and recorded many of them myself. Tracked/Mixed/Mastered many CDs at different professional/home studios, both analog and digital (DP, Logic, Pro Tools). Performed at several nationally televised events, political functions that required FBI clearance, and international conferences. Toured extensively throughout North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Maintained diplomatic relationships with American and German record labels. Interesting extra-musical experience includes package and web design, printing (posters, CD covers), booking and promoting shows, effective utilization of costumes and makeup, setting up and running a full-scale light show, tolerating the press, silk screening my own t-shirts, and dealing with a broken down bus/van/RV in the middle of nowhere at 2:00am and somehow managing to still make it to the gig later that day.

Other Music Skills/Experience:

• 200+ songs committed to memory to play at moment's notice for various active cover bands.
• Decades of practice transcribing/playing along with 1000+ records in my collection on several instruments.
• Highly prolific and efficient composer/engineer - easily and frequently generating 15+ minutes of fully realized original music in a day (including composing, writing lyrics, recording, performing on all instruments, and mixing)

Other Professional Experience:

Freelance Note/Tap Tracker (November 2009 - December 2010) - Tapulous

Generate tempo maps and design levels for highly popular iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge. Managing fast-paced content generation, testing, and deployment - sometimes as little as 24 hours between job announcement and seeing multiple youtube videos of people playing your levels.

Food Truck General Sales (January 2010 - May 2013) - Vesta Flatbread

Assist in various ways for popular food truck. Taking and fulfilling orders at farmer's markets, expediting, baking, accounting, negotiating with supply vendors, fixing broken stuff.

Miscellaneous Skills/Experience:

• Movies: Acted as an extra in several films and music videos, hobby filmmaker since high school.
• Writing: Screenplays, ridiculously detailed daily journals, several blogs.
• Technical Director/DJ for 1000 Watt college radio station for 4 years 1988-92 (teaching classes, fixing equipment, producing compilation CDs).
• Rock climbing: 10d clean, 11a with occasional hangs.
• Extensive camping/backpacking: Utah desert, high Sierras, Patagonia, New Zealand.
• Been to 49 of the 50 United States (remaining: Alaska).
• Fastest time driving coast to coast alone: 69 hours. With others: 48 hours.
• Built a clay/brick oven in my backyard - the pizzas are delicious.

Selected Articles/Papers:

The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Target Selection of Nearby Stars and Galaxies, Isaacson, H., Siemion, A., Marcy, G., Lebofsky, M., Price, D., MacMahon, D., Croft, S., DeBoer, D., Hickish, J., Werthimer, D., Sheikh, S., Hellbourg, G., Enriquez, J. E., https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.06227.

Candidate Identification and Interference Removal in SETI@home, Korpela, E., Cobb, J., Lebofsky, M., Siemion, A., Von Korff, J., Bankay, R., Werthimer, D., and Anderson, D., Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Edited by Douglas A. Vakoch, SUNY Press, 2011, p. 37-44.

Current and Nascent SETI Instruments in the Radio and Optical, Siemion, A., Chen, H., Cobb, J., Cordes, J., Filiba, T., Fries, A., Howard, A., Von Korff, J., Korpela, E., Lebofsky, M., Mallard, W., McMahon, P., Parsons, A., Spitler, L., Wagner, M., and Werthimer, D., Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Edited by Douglas A. Vakoch, SUNY Press, 2011, p. 19-36.

New SETI sky surveys for radio pulses, Siemion, A., Von Korff, J., McMahond, P., Korpela, E., Werthimer, D., Anderson, D., Bower, G., Cobb, J., Foster, G., Lebofsky, M., van Leeuwen, J., and Wagner, M., Acta Astronautica (Special Issue on Searching for Life Signatures), Volume 67, Issues 11-12, December 2010, Pages 1342-1349.

SETI with Help from Five Million Volunteers: The Berkeley SETI Efforts, Korpela, E., Anderson, D., Bankay, R., Cobb, J., Foster, G., Howard, A., Lebofsky, M., Marcy, G., Parsons, A., Siemion, A., Von Korff, J., Werthimer, D., and Douglas, K. A., Bioastronomy 2007: Molecules, Microbes and Extraterrestrial Life, p. 431.

Spin-Off Successes of SETI Research at Berkeley, Douglas, K., Anderson, D., Bankay, R., Chen, H., Cobb, J., Korpela, E., Lebofsky, M., Parsons, A., Von Korff, J., and Werthimer, D., Bioastronomy 2007: Molecules, Microbes and Extraterrestrial Life, p. 443.

Three Years of SETI@home: A Status Report, Korpela, E. J., Cobb, J., Fulton, S., Lebofsky, M., Heien, E., Person, E., Demorest, P., Bankay, R., Anderson, D. P. and Werthimer, D., Bioastronomy 2002: Life Among the Stars, Proceedings of IAU Symposium #213. Edited by R. Norris, and F. Stootman. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2003., p.419.

The Search for Life in the Universe: The Past Through the Future, Lebofsky, L. A., Lebofsky, A., Lebofsky, M. and Lebofsky, N. R. American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #35, #42.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 35, p.1005, AAS, 2003.

SETI@home: An experiment in public-resource computing, Anderson, D. P., Cobb, J., Korpela, E., Lebofsky, M. and Werthimer, D. Communications of the ACM, Nov. 2002, Vol. 45 No. 11, pp. 56-61.

SETI@home: Massively Distributed Computing for SETI, Korpela, E., Werthimer, D., Anderson, D., Cobb, J., and Lebofsky, M. in Computing in Science and Engineering, vol 3, issue 1, p. 78 (January - February 2001 issue).

SERENDIP IV: Data Acquisition, Reduction, And Analysis, Cobb, J., Werthimer, D., Lebofsky, M., Lampton, M., Bioastronomy 99: A New Era in Bioastronomy. 6th Bioastronomy Meeting - Kohala Coast Hawaii - August 2-6, 1999

Education:

Binghamton University: Fall 1988 - Spring 1992
B.S. in Computer Science/Math
B.A. in Music/Composition