Aydın Buluç, 2010 Alvarez Fellow

As the 2010 Luis W. Alvarez Fellow, Aydın Buluç will apply his expertise in combinational scientific computing primarily to increasing the reliability of the electrical grid and improve the nation's ability to respond to energy disruptions as a member of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's High Performance Computing Research Department (HPCRD). His research interests include parallel computing, combinatorial scientific computing, high performance graph analysis and sparse matrix computations.

"Berkeley Lab always seemed like a special place to me because it offered a unique combination of excellence in research, cultural diversity, and proximity to a leading university. I first learned about the Luis W. Alvarez fellowship in 2008, and it was always in my plans to apply," says Buluç, who earned a doctorate in Computer Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2010.

Originally from the Aegean region of Turkey, Buluç did not own a personal computer until he was in college. He was introduced to computer science in an undergraduate data structures course at Sabanci University in Istanbul. Shortly after he decided to major in computer science and minor in mathematics, and has "never looked back."

"I was fascinated by the combined elegance and practicality of computer science, it was a secret way of doing mathematics with more relevance to practical issues," says Buluç.

Though Buluç is a new to the Bay Area, he has admired the region's bridges and "beautiful landscapes in an urban setting." A self-described tango addict, Buluç spends much of his spare time dancing, taking portraits of people, eating good food and watching good cinema.