Hi everybody, I'm Tim. Technically I am doing this all backwards, in that I have already posted on the Steemit platform for over a week, but allow me to introduce myself properly. Here's me in the back right. I don't own a camera - you'd be surprised how little PhD students actually make.
I am a Dutch national, born and raised 5 meters below sea level in a polder - literally a drained lake. My childhood home bordered a tulip and a potato farm, so you could say I had a very stereotypical Dutch childhood (mind you there was a caryard next door too, so take that with a grain of salt). The winters involved many snowmen and plenty of iceskating, while my summer job was helping my grandfather mill wheat flour for a living, in a windmill from the 1800s.
When I turned 11, my parents uprooted the family and moved as far away from The Netherlands as they possibly could, settling in New Zealand. Getting off the plane, I remember seeing dirt and rock hulking way above the horizon (read: there were mountains, of which The Netherlands has zero) and the feeling was surreal. I cannot describe how crazy this place felt. I love it.
While here, I have spent a lot of time tramping, caving and fishing. I recently returned from a road trip to the deep south, and before that went on 5 day trip around Stewart Island (even further south). On my introverted days, I enjoy reading, playing video games, browsing Reddit (and now Steemit!) and tinkering with my flatmate's cars. Sport wise, I used to play competitive badminton but no longer have the time.
I have completed an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Canterbury (lived through the Christchurch Earthquakes), and am currently studying towards a PhD in biomedical engineering. I specialise in neuronal ion dynamics (how things such as calcium propagate both within, and between, neurons). The overall aim of our research team is to understand neuro-degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, to enable drug development and ultimately a cure that reverses the ailment.
The primary roadblock to my research is a distinct lack of compute power. We used to have access to a supercomputer on-site, but the governing body of our university has decommissioned it as a result of the powerbill running close to NZD$1,000,000 per annum. Since then, I have become a strong proponent of distributed compute power, and people donating their idle clock cycles to research. As a matter of fact, it was while I was researching ways to power my models that I came across cryptocurrencies such as Curecoin, Foldcoin and Gridcoin, which is how I discovered Steemit! If all idle clock cycles in the first world were donated to research, we could quite literally cure diseases like HIV through exhaustive searches - brute force modelling every single chemical/protein's interaction with the virus.
I hope to spend my time on this platform networking with other researchers and people working in the field of distributed computing. I will also be sharing my adventures around the country, and if there is an interest I would be happy to write more about my research.
Cheers,
Tim
P.S. Yes, I own clogs. They just scream comfort and style don't they?
