Kevin-Druis Merenda Email & Phone Number

Denver, Co, Us

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, SupportVectorMachine and GradientBoosting.• 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.• Developed a gpu-accelerated lightning-location reconstruction, using PyTorch, with a multilayer perceptron trained and tested on simulated TLE data.• Performed spatio-temporal correlations with ground and satellite experiments to recover properties of elve-inducing lightning.• Executed bi-yearly maintenance of the aerosol monitoring laser facilities of the observatory and reported on the hourly aerosol measurements made year-around.• Reported internationally on multiple discoveries, such as the lowest altitude elve-inducing intra-cloud discharge and the correlation between elves and superbolts.

• 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