Maruf is a second year student from The University of Surrey. He again was working with Athena but instead was looking at the memory allocation of the software. More specifically: memory allocation for the high-level trigger (HLT) of the ATLAS experiment. A trigger being an event selection system which selects those that may be of interest for later analysis and the HLT is a software based trigger that refines the analysis of the hardware-based Level-1 trigger.

Studying a Masters in Physics, he’d been taught Fortran at university, a language which he says allows easy transition to others. But without help from his supervisor he could’ve easily felt overwhelmed with the task, whilst also moving onto learning C++ and Python. Also, in learning on the job he feels he has picked up many more shortcuts and commands than  he would have done through traditional university teaching.

Because of his degree structure this was the last summer Maruf had the opportunity to take on something such as this and he seems happy to have had the opportunity, since for him it has helped validate his career path. The work he did in memory allocation proved successful as he showed ATHENA may not be using the best available allocator for all tasks, and changes will be made based on Maruf’s findings. He feels he has made a difference in the world of particle physics, and it has overall been a gratifying experience.

Supervisor: Stewart Martin-Haugh

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