Uthpalaย Herath
Sr. Research Computing Engagement Specialist at Duke University
Durham, North Carolina, United States
Summary
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Top SchoolUthpala Herath is a Sr. Research Computing Engagement Specialist at Duke University, blending 10 years of experience in computational physics, data science, and high-performance computing to help multidisciplinary teams turn bold ideas into scalable, high-impact research. Based in Durham, North Carolina, she also helps researchers statewide through NCShare, expanding access to advanced computing resources for education and research. Her postdoctoral work at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering advanced CPU/GPU HPC workflows and materials science research, including a novel ฮ-SCF method that led to a Nature publication and the integration of relativistic spin-orbit coupling into GW calculations. At West Virginia University she led open-source projects like DMFTwDFT, PyProcar, and MechElastic, building large global communities of users and driving multiple highly cited publications. Her work has secured significant grants, including NSF XSEDE contributions and a TACC Frontera Pathways award, and she mentors students while guiding CI pipelines and Docker-enabled workflows. An active advocate for open science, she fuses deep theoretical insight with practical HPC tooling to accelerate research in physics, materials science, and beyond.
8 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor's degree, Physics (Major) and Mathematics (Minor), Honors, Bachelor's degree, Physics (Major) and Mathematics (Minor), Honors at University of PeradeniyaDoctor of Philosophy - PhD, Physics, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Physics at West Virginia UniversityGCE Advanced Level, Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry, GCE Advanced Level, Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry at Trinity College Kandy
Sinhalese, English, Tamil, pฤli
Github Skills (82)
python10
powerline10
wave10
code-completion10
dotfiles10
screen10
python-scripts10
temperature10
post-processing10
elk10
shell10
cli10
tmux-configuration10
dft10
tty10
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
uthpalaherath/MatSciScripts
Mar 2020 - Nov 2022
Contributions:135 commits, 141 pushes, 1 branch in 2 years 8 months
romerogroup/pyprocar
Mar 2018 - Jun 2021
A Python library for electronic structure pre/post-processing
Contributions:7 releases, 233 commits, 14 PRs in 3 years 3 months
python-librarypost-processingphysicspythonelk
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