Rob ert C. Ball
Ph ysics Dept, Univ ersit y of Mic higan
500 E. Univ ersit y
Ann Arb or, MI 48109-1120
Education
1974 B.S., Ph ysics, Mic higan State Univ ersit y
1979 Ph.D., High Energy Ph ysics, Mic higan State Univ ersit y
(Thesis advisor, K.W.Chen)
P ositions Held
1979{1982 P ostdo ctoral Sc holar, Univ ersit y o f Mic higan
1982{1987 Assistan t Researc h Scien tist, Univ ersit y of Mic higan
1988{1995 Asso ciate Researc h Scien tist, Univ ersit y of Mic higan
1995{1996 Senior Researc h Scien tist, Univ ersit y of Mic higan
1996{Presen t Senior Researc h Asso c. Science and Eng., Univ ersit y ofMic higan
Researc h Activit i es
Rob ert Ball has b een w orking most recen tly on data acquisition soft w are and hardw are
for testing the A TLAS MDT c ham b ers. This includes the dev elopmen t of a PC-based
Mini Data Acuisition soft w are suite utiliti zi ng Lab windo ws/CVI soft w are from National
Instrumen ts. He has a long standing exp ertise in data acquisition soft w are dating bac k
to some of the earliest da ys of FNAL. He w as a part of the SDC collab oration team at
the SSC whic h pro duced the UNID A Q suite of p ortable, UNIX-based D A Q soft w are. F or
the L3 exp erimen t he assem bled and op erated a F ermilab A CP/R3000 parallel pro cessing
farm whic hw as the largest, non-CERN computing resource for the L3 exp erimen to v er a
p erio d of sev eral y ears. More recen tly he to ok the lead in ensuring that a mo dern net w ork
bac kb one w as installed in the ph ysics building complex at the Univ ersit y of Mic higan and
is still called up on to help trouble sho ot diculties when they arise. As a sta mem ber
of the HEP electronics shop at Mic higan he administers or o v ersees the administration of
the HEP UNIX clusters. As the A TLAS activit y unfolds he in tends to tak e an activ e role
in the Mic higan e orts in A TLAS data acquisition, in the establishmen t and op eration of
the A TLAS/CDF/Dą computing cluster, and in collab oratory w ork with the UM Sc ho ol
of Information.
Publications
1 : Soft w are for UNIX-based Data Acquisition, UNID A Q Do cumen tation Set v2.2, Ed-
itor R. Ball, SDC{93{573, UM{HE{93{29, Sept, 1993.
2 : Comm un ications and Con trol Mec hanisms in the Unix-Based UNID A Q Data Acqui-
sition Soft w are, IEEE T ransactions on Nuclear Science, Real-Time 95 Conference
Record.