Alper leads the team and services that support researchers in leveraging Northwestern’s computing resources and external platforms, including NSF - ACCESS and public cloud services. He focuses on developing services that improve the user experience and enhance equity across our diverse research community in accessing and utilizing high-performance computing. Key improvements he has facilitated for Quest include the implementation of an elegant and efficient job scheduler, introduction of a global scratch space, and deployment of software management tools empowering reproducible research. Alper also expanded training opportunities on parallel computing frameworks, GPU accelerated workflows, machine learning, and public cloud resources.
Alper is an active contributor to national research computing and data (RCD) communities of practice. He is a long-time member of Campus Champions, and he has delivered presentations and contributed to panels for the Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) meetings, Virtual Residency workshops, and Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC) Conference in topics such as forming and sustaining teams of cyberinfrastructure professionals and students, increasing the effectives of research facilitators, and cloud best practices for research.
Alper is dedicated to growing student skills and careers. He developed and strengthened a student computational specialist program in Research Computing Services, and he chaired the PEARC Student-Mentor program for multiple years. Previously, he served as a reviewer for Supercomputing Conference Student Program and NSF - Expert Mentoring Producing Opportunities for Work, Education, and Research (EMPOWER) Program for underrepresented student communities in STEM fields. Alper has a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Texas A&M University and worked as a Postdoc at the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory. He has a strong publication record in tools and theories that are commonly used in modelling materials from nano to macro-scale.