Dana Robinson has been appointed as the new Director of Engineering at The HDF Group. Dana started at The HDF Group in 2009 as a software engineer until stepping into the role of interim Director of Engineering in April 2022. As the Director of Engineering, Dana will lead the team of software engineers and shape the engineering culture, including developing the roadmap for HDF5 releases. Externally, he will engage at all levels in research, development, consulting, opportunity analysis, and community outreach.
A skilled software engineer and scientific data architect with over twenty-five years of experience across a wide variety of disciplines, Dana started his career at The HDF Group working on a bioinformatics project, then moved to library development. He’s worked on projects including BioHDF, an attempt at storing next-generation DNA sequencing data in HDF5; a FermiLab project to store neutrino data in an HDF5-based format; ITERDB, the storage system for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor; implementation of the virtual object layer (VOL) for the US Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project; and was one of the key developers of the HDF Group’s flagship HDF5 library.
Dana received his PhD in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Illinois and a bachelors in science from University of Illinois. He lives in Walnut Creek, California with his wife and two children.