Kevin-Druis Merenda Email & Phone Number

Denver, CO, US

Lakewood, Colorado, United States

Lakewood, Colorado, United States

Golden, Colorado, United States

• Developed the first end-to-end simulation, in Matlab and parallelized C++, of a transient luminous event (TLE) induced by lightning discharges and detected by the observatory.
• Optimized the TLE simulation modules to minimize memory usage and increase processing speed for the creation of a large dataset used for sensitivity studies of the observatory.
• Contributed to the development and de-bugging, with GDB and Valgrind, of the proprietary analysis framework of the observatory (OffLine), written in C++ and ROOT.
• Generated a large dataset of simulated TLE with a Monte Carlo approach, using Grid Engine, Bash and Docker, on a self-assembled computer cluster.
• Explored the simulated dataset, using Tensorflow, for machine learning application with algorithms that included t-SNE and dimensionality reduction with PCA, signal rescaling, k-nearest neighbors, RandomForest.
• Mined and assimilated the real dataset of TLEs to test the detection capabilities of the observatory and the validity of the current theory behind their creation.

• TA for multiple classes advanced physics lab (Aug. - Dec. 2015, Aug. - Dec. 2019)
• TA for undergraduate mathematical physics (Jan. - May 2016)

Switzerland

• Collaborated on the state-of-the-art experiment, which studies ultra-rare Kaon decays and their possible violations of the standard model of elementary particle physics.
• Implemented a Kalman Filter to improve on the previous particle tracking algorithm of the 100-m long low-mass straw spectrometer, equipped with a 0.4 T dipole magnet.
• Quantified the experiment’s background-photon rejection efficiencies in all detectors.
• Calculated the inefficiency of a liquid krypton calorimeter at detecting a specific elementary particle, using serendipitous particle scattering off an upstream detector.
• Developed the data-acquisition software, using a proprietary analysis framework based on C++ and ROOT, for a micro-mesh gaseous detector designed to track particles.
• Organized in-beam performance tests of the prototype with the Super Proton Synchrotron.

Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland

• Tuteur d'un groupe de 6-8 élèves de la classe de physique pour les étudiants en Bachelor d'informatique et communication de l'EPFL.

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

• Analyzed meteorological satellite data, using IDL, to study electron temperatures at magnetospheric boundaries during the occurrence of stable auroral red arcs (sar-arc) that were detected by ground-based imagers.
• Studied a correlation between electron temperature of the ionosphere and sar-arcs for a specific geomagnetic storm.
• Improved the GUI, using Visual Studio and C++, for a micro-controller setup designed for the optical calibration of all-sky imagers.

Geneva Area, Switzerland

Boston, MA

Research Doctorate, Physics

Masters, Physics

Particle Physics Concentration

Bachelor Of Arts (B.A.), Physics, Astronomy, Pure And Applied Math

Double Major: Astronomy and Physics / Mathematics.

Education record

International High School in Lausanne, Switzerland

Physics

Semester Abroad