Peter Couvares

"As a child, I wanted to be an archaeologist. I was into medieval ruins and Egyptian tombs and thought that would be the best job in the world. I've always been a science geek, but I started my professional career in industry. I didn't become involved in research computing until I took a job as a staff researcher for the Condor Project in the UW-Madison Computer Sciences Dept. in 1999, where I developed the Condor Directed Acyclic Graph Manager (DAGMan) tool, and LIGO scientists were among its first users. After a brief foray back into industry at a data visualization startup, my colleagues convinced me to start working directly for LIGO in 2010, at Syracuse University. "

Peter Couvares is the LIGO Laboratory's Data Analysis Computing Manager. Among other things, his job is to make sure LIGO researchers have all the computing resources they for their science. After a long day at work, he likes a strong cocktail,  and a good meal with his wife, Laura Cadonati, and their kids. Peter's favorite piece of art is Jimi Hendrix's performance of Machine Gun, Live at the Fillmore East.  In the next decade, he hopes to help build the computing infrastructure powering third-generation gravitational-wave science - or another big experiment!