Systems & Data Engineering for Physical Measurement

Systems and data engineering for hardware that measures the physical world: lab instrumentation, field-deployed sensors, industrial data acquisition, and the modeling of physical systems. Nearly three decades across Linux kernel internals, networking, and distributed systems, now focused on scientific computing and geophysical data.

ceremona_at_gmail.com · 206.414.9448 · Github · Linkedin

Trajectory

Nearly three decades of cross-layer systems work: from modifying Linux kernels in C for distributed computing, to wire-level network forensics (L1–7), to building embedded measurement rigs and data-acquisition systems for industrial thermal processes. Deep physics foundation with published field-geophysics research. Currently focused on scientific computing, statistical modeling, and the analysis of physical-world data.

Field Science & Instrumentation

Science Technician, South Pole Station, Antarctica · 1993–1994 Atmospheric ozone / optical instrumentation

• Instrument operations: Operated, maintained, and repaired optical, UV-A/B/C, and aurora/airglow measurement instruments for atmospheric ozone research.
• Field conditions: Collected continuous data through the Antarctic winter; diagnosed and repaired instrument failures in isolation, with no resupply and no possibility of recovering lost data.

Seismological Analyst (Intern), University of Alaska Fairbanks — Geophysical Institute · 1992–1993 Field seismology / multi-station data analysis

• Field deployment & analysis: Assisted in regional seismometer field deployment; performed multi-station time-series analysis on seismic network data.
• Anomaly detection: Identified anomalous simultaneous signals across stations, showed the simultaneity could not be explained by acoustic propagation, and traced the signal to volcanic lightning — leading to a co-authored publication.

Publications

• C.M. Davis, “Volcanic lightning observations” — Mount Spurr (EOS/AGU, 1993)
• C.M. Davis, “A Comparison of Micro-Viscosity to Shear Viscosity in Lyotropic Nematic Liquid Crystals,” Bulletin of the American Physical Society, 1993.
• S. McNutt and C.M. Davis, Volcanic Lightning at Mt. Spurr, 1992. Colima Volcano: Fourth International Meeting, Colima, Mexico. January 24 to 28, 1994, p. 112, Abstracts Volume
• S.R. McNutt & C.M. Davis, “Lightning Associated with the 1992 Eruptions of Crater Peak, Mount Spurr Volcano, Alaska,” Journal of Volcanology & Geothermal Research, 2000.

Engineering Experience

Independent Systems Engineer & Research Consultant · Jul 2012 – Present Berkeley, CA · Hybrid / Remote

Deliver instrumentation, data-acquisition software, and physical-measurement analysis for industrial, energy, and environmental clients.

• Research & prototyping: Iterative hardware/software design for scientific instrumentation; laboratory testing protocols, data analysis, and materials characterization.
• Mechatronic & kinetic systems: Sensor-driven kinetic assemblies with real-time closed-loop motor control; CAD (Fusion 360), embedded programming (C/C++, Python, Arduino Microcontrollers) analog sensor integration.
• ALL Power Labs (2019): Designed, built, and field-tested a thermal measurement and monitoring system for a large-scale industrial pyrolysis reactor. Sensor selection, analog frontend and PCB development (KiCad, LTSpice), signal conditioning, calibration, and real-time data acquisition (LabVIEW, Python) under thermal and electrical noise. Planned integration into a downstream data-analytics pipeline.
• Inspect Air Quality (2017): Wrote data-acquisition and control code for environmental sensor systems on 32-bit microcontrollers; authored deployment and programming documentation for non-specialist field users.
• ElectroTherm (2014–2015): Analyzed solar radiance measurements for a thermal solar tracker developer. Integrated client time-series with NREL reference datasets to quantify power-conversion gains; validated measured performance against a national reference standard.
• Energy R&D client (2013–2014): Lab instrumentation operation and maintenance, experimental physical-measurement data analysis, and lab data-acquisition and computing infrastructure.

Principal Platform Design Engineer, VCE · Jun 2011 – Jun 2012 · Full-time San Jose, CA · On-site

• Architected fully integrated compute/storage/network platforms for enterprise deployment (EMC, Cisco, VMware stack).
• Owned cross-subsystem integration and hardware-to-orchestration validation loops.

Senior Solutions Architect, Wholem IT · May 2010 – Sep 2010 · Contract Greater Seattle Area · Hybrid

• Directed the enterprise migration of an entire institutional IT infrastructure to Google Workspace. Built the transition roadmap and coordinated execution across identity/security, DNS, databases, email, and filesystems.
• Required cross-departmental diplomacy and director-level leadership; delivered a cohesive, institution-wide cutover with zero downtime.

Pre / Post-Sales Enterprise Network Engineer, F5 Networks · Oct 2006 – Jun 2010 Seattle, WA · On-site

• Network Forensics & Protocol Analysis: Used Wireshark and custom tooling for deep L1–7 packet and protocol analysis. Reproduced complex customer network pathologies in the lab, isolating root cause across routing, TCP/IP, SSL, and application-layer behavior.
• Systems Prototyping: Built complex, multi-vendor lab environments (Cisco 6500, VMware ESX, LanForge packet generators) to mirror production failure modes for WAN optimization appliances.
• Automation & Performance: Developed test automation and instrumentation for Alpha/Beta feature validation; fed strategic feature priorities back to engineering.

Senior System Architect & Engineer, University of Washington · Jul 1997 – Jul 2005 Seattle, WA · Full-time

• Kernel & Distributed Systems: Modified Linux kernel headers and source in C for compatibility with the OpenMosix distributed process-migration patch. Debugged race conditions and memory-model issues across a clustered Unix environment.
• Cluster Architecture: Architected and built a research-grade Unix compute cluster and network infrastructure from the ground up. Developed load-gathering tools (Python), TCP/IP state-tracking utilities, and automation frameworks for cluster software deployment and performance regression testing.
• Virtualization: Deployed and managed Xen and VMware virtual-desktop environments.

Unix Systems Administrator, North Seattle Community College · 1996–1997 Unix Systems Deployment Engineer, Digital Systems Inc. · 1995

Selected Projects & Research

Extropic.AI — Computing using KL Divergence · 2026 · github.com/ceremona/Extropic-ai-examples Gibbs sampling to reconstruct an image of corrupted pixels using a Bayesian Markov Random Field method.

LLM Dissections & Topological Analysis · 2026 · github.com/ceremona/nnsight_benchmarks LLM interpretability experiments with NNsight.

CA-as-Reservoir · 2026 · github.com/ceremona/CA-as-Reservoir Investigating cellular automata as discrete physical reservoirs for temporal computation. Characterizing memory capacity and nonlinear dynamics at the edge of chaos; exploring implications for analog and unconventional computing substrates. Implemented in Python with custom readout and statistical analysis.

Ongoing Research · 2024 – Present Independent deep-dive into neuromorphic architectures, generative model internals, and first-principles ML framework mechanics.

Tools & Methods

Languages: Python, C, C++, SQL, Shell Scientific & Data: NumPy, SciPy, pandas, xarray; time-series analysis, spatial analysis, uncertainty quantification, applied statistics ML & Modeling: MCMC, Gibbs sampling, PCA/EOF, Markov Random Fields; deep-learning fundamentals (actively building depth) Systems: Linux kernel internals, distributed systems, TCP/IP networking (L1–7), virtualization, Docker, Kubernetes, git, CI/CD Hardware: microcontrollers, embedded systems, data acquisition, sensor calibration, LabVIEW, LTSpice, KiCad, CAD (Fusion 360) Cloud: Google Cloud Platform (BigQuery, Cloud Run)

Education

• BS, Physics — University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1992
• Graduate coursework, Statistics & Epidemiology — University of Washington, 2000–2006
• MA, Philosophy of Science — Leibniz Universität Hannover, 2022

Community

• Education Exhibit Designer - California Historical Radio Society (2026).
• Board Member - Counter Culture Labs (2014-2016).

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