Matthew McGurn
Engineer • Developer • Volunteer

About

Matt has focused his career upon the development of complex simulation frameworks and required interfaces to allow these powerful tools to be used by a wide variety of people. Holding his PhD in Mechanical Engineering (2013) from the University at Buffalo, he is well versed in the mathematics, physics, and software programming methods associated with CFD and FE based formulations. He is experienced in developing models using a wide variety of frameworks and languages including full web stack, modern software methods, and developing new computational methods/tools.

It was during his tenure at the University at Buffalo that Matt first developed his desire to help animals. After rescuing his first dog Tucker, Matt served as a founding board member of the NonProfit Friends of Ellicott that was chartered to established a local dog park. After moving to Salt Lake City he found himself volunteering with Community Animal Welfare Society, eventually joining the Board of Directors and becoming president. Matt's skill sets have overlapped in both nonprofit and professional pursuits as he developed software, policies, and procedures to present complex tasks and tools to people.

Experience

CHREST
Software Framework Architect, 2020 – Present
Buffalo, NY

Leading development and integration efforts of the Center's shared computational framework ABLATE - Ablative Boundary Layers At The Exascale

additional responsibilities include:
serving as the Technical Contact for the PSAAP Computer Resource Team
helping to mentor undergraduate and graduate students
organizing annual reports for the center

Ansys
Research & Developer Engineer II, 2019 – 2020
Park City, Utah

Tasked with developing application and supporting framework in-order to expose multiple physics based solvers to Ansys customers for Additive Manufacturing modeling.

contributed to the development and design of solver controller framework
engineered reactive graph framework to link execution and setup of multiple independent solvers
exposed framework through multiple clients: CLI, desktop application, GRPC server, etc.
built and maintained developer operations for the project including: automated regression testing \& build/publish pipelines
participated in the maintenance and enhancement of existing web based application for the setup and execution of Additive Manufacturing simulations on distributed platforms

Reaction Engineering International
Senior Research Engineer, 2013 – 2019
Salt Lake City, Utah

Took on the role as lead high performance computing research engineer tasked with the development of new frameworks and extension of existing frameworks to HPC applications along with the user interfaces to access the software.

Served as principal investigator and lead engineer on multiple oil & gas related DoE SBIRs exploring the underground reservoir and fracture networks including:
Phase I, HPC-based Validation of Water/Natural Gas Mixtures as a Fracturing Fluid for Effective Multiple Stage Hydraulic Fracturing. Primary focus of the project was to make use of advanced modeling and simulation software to perform assessments of cryogenic natural gas and natural gas-water blends as hydraulic fracturing fluids.
Involves the extension of an existing HPC framework for compositional simulations.
Phase II, A HPC-based Flowback and Cleanup Simulator Tool for Horizontal Well Completion and Optimization. The goal of this project is to develop a comprehensive, high fidelity simulator that integrates fundamental models for fracturing, the reservoir behavior, and the geomechanical behavior of the formation.
Primary architect on ground up modeling and simulation framework
Designed for HPC computation using commercially available HPC resources
Tasked with developer user interface for remote access of the software.
Principal investigator and one of the lead engineers for an Army SBIR Phase I project, Rapid Prediction of Convective Heat Transfer for Thermal Signature Analysis (Contract Number: W56HZV-14-C-0176)
The project involves the development and demonstration of a next-generation computational fluid dynamics code that utilizes cutting-edge software and hardware (GPUs) to model convective heat transfer.
Engineer on a Marine Corp Phase II project that involves time-step-level coupling a sophisticated multi-material, particle-based model (MPMICE) with the LSDYNA finite element code to model blast effects on ground vehicles and occupants.
Key engineer on a consulting project to develop a user interface for REI’s three-dimensional reacting two-phase flow model of gases and particles framework.
Key engineer contributing to the continued Navy Phase II and II.5 SBIR project, “A Multiscale Modeling and Simulation Framework for Predicting After-Burning Effects from Non-Ideal Explosives”.
Implemented adaptive mesh refinement using hybrid multi-threading and MPI implementation.
Incorporated openMPI Java binding support into framework.
Developed and implemented a novel one-dimensional to three-dimensional explosive initialization sub-model for FAE explosives, which both reduces computational time and increases accuracy.
Served as company Assistant Facility Security Officer (AFSO) and Information Systems Security Officer (ISSO) for select government projects.

University at Buffalo
Computational Energy Transport Laboratory
Research Assistant, 2008 – 2013 Advisor: Dr. Paul DesJardin
Buffalo, New York

Dissertation research involved the computational investigation of flame spread over charring materials. Numerical solution approaches include an Eulerian-Lagrangian moving immersed interface method for simulating burning solids including and finite element model for the thermal response of charring materials in fire environments including:

Contributed to and maintained Computational Energy Transport Lab physics simulation framework
Developed custom implementation of Java based MPI launchers and visual debuggers
Developed/implemented Eulerian-Lagrangian moving immersed interface method for simulating burning solids including;
level set description of complex moving geometry with novel dynamic effective resolution Lagrangian mesh update
explicit conservation of energy and mass transfer across the interface
mesh independent and accurate capture of heat flux to surface
Developed/implemented finite element model for the thermal response of charring materials in fire environments including
study of balsa wood, carbon-epoxy composites, and gypsum board
volumetric swelling using a novel finite element algorithm
heat, mass, and individual species transport
pyrolysis decomposition
Extended Finite Element framework to include Streamline Upwind Galerkin Elements (SUPG) for use with highly advecting flows.
Developed parallel finite element solver currently in use at the University at Buffalo’s Center for Computational Research supercomputing facilities.
Developed unstructured communication model implemented in the finite volume flow solver for the study of complex geometries.

University at Buffalo
Teaching Assistant, September 2007 – May 2008
Buffalo, New York

Served as teaching assistant for undergraduate courses in heat transfer and fluid dynamics. Conducted weekly study sessions with an average attendance of about a dozen students.

PlugPower
Mechanical Engineering Internship, Summer 2006 and 2007
Latham, New York

Designed GenSys external power conditioning module enclosure and developed factory calibration and functional test specifications for GenGore Fuel Module requiring the design and implementation of the hydrogen fuel module factory test equipment along with the derivation of the associated acceptance criteria.

Education

Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering, February 2013
Dissertation: “Numerical Modeling and Simulation of Flame Spread Over Charring Materials”
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
GPA: 3.933/4.0; Advisor: Dr. Paul E. DesJardin
Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, June 2010
Project: “A Parallel Computing Domain Decomposition Approach for Finite Element Models”
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
Specialization in Fluid and Thermal Sciences, GPA: 3.91/4.0
Bachelor of Science in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, June 2007
Bachelor of Science in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, June 2007
University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
Graduated Magna Cum Laude, GPA: 3.70/4.0

Related Work

Publications & Conference Proceedings

A scalable compressible volume of fluid solver using a stratified flow model
Sementilli, Mae L., McGurn, Matthew T., Chen, James, International journal for numerical methods in fluids, Vol.95 (5), p.777-795. (2023)
A HPC-Based Flowback and Cleanup Simulator Tool for Horizontal Well Completion and Optimization
McGurn, Matthew. Report for USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22) (2018)
Droplet Flame Generated Manifolds for use in Large Eddy Simulations of Two-phase Reacting Flows
55th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Combustion Modeling and Simulation II (2017)
Initialization of high-order accuracy immersed interface CFD solvers using complex CAD geometry
DesJardin, Paul E. and Bojko, Brian T. and McGurn, Matthew T. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering (2016)
An Eulerian-Lagrangian Moving Immersed Interface Method for Simulating Burning Solids
McGurn, M. T. and Ruggirello, K. and DesJardin, P. E. Journal of Computational Physics. 241(0): 364-387. (2013)
Numerical Simulation of Expansion and Charring of Carbon-epoxy Laminates in Fire Environments.
McGurn, M. T. and DesJardin, P. E. and Dodd, A. B. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 55(1-3): 272-281. (2012)
Thermal Modeling of Carbon-Epoxy Laminates in Fire Environments.
McGurn, M. T. and Desjardin, P. E. and Dodd, A. B. 10th International Symposium on Fire Safety Science, June 19-24, 2011, College Park, MD, USA, Interscience Communications Ltd. (2011)
Thermal Modeling of Balsa Wood for Fire Environments.
McGurn, M. T. and DesJardin, P.E. and Goodrich, T. and Lattimer, B.Y. and Lua, J. (2009). Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE) Symposium & Exhibition, Baltimore, MD. (2009)
Numerical Modeling and Simulation of Flame Spread Over Charring Materials.
McGurn, M. T. State University of New York at Buffalo (2012)
A HPC-Based Flowback and Cleanup Simulator Tool for Horizontal Well Completion and Optimization
McGurn, Matthew. Report for USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22) United States: N. p., 2018. Web. (2018)

Invited Talks and Tutorials

MAE 502 ‐ Research Methods in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Guest Lecturer ‐ Spring 2023 ‐ University at Buffalo

Developed and presented lectures covering basics in modern software development methodology, programming, and visualization/plotting.

Coding ABLATE Self‐Guided Tutorial
2022 ‐ University at Buffalo ‐ CHREST

Developed online course designed to prepare new developers for contributing to ABLATE and include git/version control, IDE/debugging, c/c++, PETSc, and ABLATE. The course is composed from multiple resources including book chapters, online tutorials, videos, manuals, and custom content.

CCR’s Learning Lab Seminar Series
Invited Speaker ‐ December 8, 2021 ‐ Buffalo, NY

Provided overview of the Center for Hybrid Rocket Exascale Simulation Technology framework development and methodology.

Community Animal Welfare Society Foster/Volunteer Orientation
Developer and Author ‐ 2019/2020 ‐ Salt Lake City, Utah

Developed the framework and contributed to the content for a volunteer and foster based online tutorial/course series. Courses included text and video content customized for each volunteer based upon their roles.

Training & Professional Activities

Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing (ATPESC)
Activities July 30 – August 11, 2017 in St. Charles, IL

Two-week training on the key skills, approaches, and tools to design, implement, and execute computational science and engineering applications on current high-end computing systems and the leadership-class computing systems of the future.

NonProfit Leadership

CAWS - Community Animal Welfare Society
Salt Lake City, Utah

CAWS is a no-kill, volunteer and foster-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is working with the community to help animals. As Utah’s oldest animal rescue group, our ongoing rescue, foster, education and adoption programs help animals whose time is up at shelters, those who are abandoned, and as our resources allow, those whom their owners can no longer keep.

Board President • Board Secretary • Dog Adoption Coordinator

Board President
2019 – 2020

Implement policies and procedures to ensure governing accountability and transparency
Provide the tools and resources to engage with and support new and long term fosters
Establish the CAWS Hub, a central location for foster supplies, donations, meet & greets, and other resources thereby reducing the entry to fostering.

Board Secretary
2017 – 2019

As a volunteer based organization, CAWS's most valuable resource is volunteers. During the time as secretary, I focused upon providing policy and technological tools to volunteers including:

developed on-line course work and system for training new foster applicants
automated adopter follow-up system after one-month and six-months
developed Google gMail/sheets Add-On that integrates with custom adopter/animal database
automated animal kennel card creation replacing Word based template

Dog Adoption Coordinator
2016 – 2018

Routine responsibilities include running dog adoption events, coordinating rescue activities, and interacting with fosters & adopters
Developed and implemented automated email follow up system for recent dog adoptions
Built foster information website using tools available to the organization

Friends of Ellicott Island 501(c)(3)
Founding Board Member, Secretary 2013-2014
Amherst, New York

The organization was founded to work with Erie County Park office to establish an off-leash dog park within the county parks. The organization is responsible for fundraising, dog park rules/regulations, improvement projects, liability insurance, and community outreach.

Responsible for website development, maintained, and other IT concerns
Developed and implemented membership program
Contributed to community outreach and fundraising

Current Project

Serving in both a volunteer and leadership role within CAWS, the need for a central location for communication was needed. To address this need The CAWS Den was developed. The primary objectives behind the development of The CAWS Den were

Provide fosterers and volunteers an easy resource for information thereby reducing work for head volunteers in leadership positions.
Integrate into existing tools including familiar to the head volunteers:
Google Drive & G-Suite
Shelter Manger (Existing Animal Database)
FaceBook
Reduce head volunteers time-commitment using streamed lined practices and automation.

The CAWS Den is composed of a single page web application built using React-Redux and a custom Go server responsible for merging local and remote data from multiple resources.

The dashboard provides access to up-coming adoption events and the CAWS Feed. The feed is a combination of news articles, Instagram post, and achievement awards.
CAWS fosterers have a wide variety of technical skill sets so ensure that they could login using familiar tools (Google & FaceBook) was critical for adoption.
A custom automatic and manual achievement system encourages fosterers and volunteers to keep going while showing what they already accomplished.
Custom Go Server

The custom written go server handles user, animal, achievement, events, etc. while combine data from multiple sources. Key features include:

automatic permission based access
automatic achievement assignment and notification
dynamic caching from Google Drive CMS
The Application Status page walks new volunteers and fosters through the steps need to start volunteering.
Events available to volunteers and fosters dynamically appear where they can sign-up or register their fosters. The registration instantly syncs with Google Sheets available to the head volunteers.
Head volunteers can write News & Update articles using their editor of choice (Google Docs) where they automatically appear here, the feed, and emailed to volunteers according to use preference.
Volunteers in leadership positions can create reference documentation using Google Docs that present to volunteers in the same folder hierarchy as embedded html. This systems reduces time for the volunteers to answer questions or write documentation.
Fosterers can view the status and pictures of previous fosters or view details of current fosters. Answering questions about their current fosters get them ready for adoption.
Fosterers and volunteers looking to learn can utilize the custom course framework to watch lessons and videos that help them help the animals.
As volunteers for CAWS you can gain access to the CAWS Hub, a central location for supplies and donations to help you fosterer. The Den provides the required unique key to gain access and records each entry.
Custom Google gMail and Sheet Add-Ons provide quick access actions to head volunteers reducing repetitive tasks and response times.

Fostering & Volunteering

I first started with CAWS as a foster and volunteer. What motivates me and keeps me helping is the difference in lives (both human and dog) that fostering can make. Each of these dogs has now found their their forever home.

Contact

Matt@McGurn.dev
for development and engineering
Matt@rescueden.org
for nonprofit and rescue
LinkedIn Profile
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Helping

If you are interested in learning more about animal rescue and how you can contribute please contact me, visit caws.org, or your local animal rescue or shelter.