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Akarsh Simha
Software Engineer
Akarsh Simha is a software engineer with a strong background in physics and a significant involvement in open-source development, particularly within the KDE community.3 Here's a detailed profile of Akarsh Simha:
Educational Background
Akarsh Simha holds a Ph.D. in Physics from The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to that, he completed his Bachelor's degree in Technology in Engineering Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Professional Experience
Software Engineering:: Akarsh works as a software engineer, leveraging his expertise in physics to build and optimize software systems.1
Open Source Contributions::
- He is a prominent contributor to KDE, an open-source software community.
- Akarsh is particularly known for his work on KStars, a cross-platform open-source astronomy software written in C++ and Qt.23
- His contributions to KStars include bug fixes, refactoring of core code-base, significant performance enhancements, implementation of larger star catalogs, and improved usability.3
Skills and Expertise
- Physics: Experienced in theoretical and experimental physics, with skills in optics, applied mathematics, and fluid dynamics.1
- Programming: Proficient in C++ and Qt, as evidenced by his work on KStars.2
- Optimization: Known for reducing computation time for celestial object positions in KStars.2
- Open Source Development: Active volunteer developer and mentor for Google Summer of Code.
Additional Interests
Akarsh Simha's work demonstrates a unique blend of scientific knowledge and software engineering skills, which he applies to solve complex problems and contribute to the open-source community, particularly in the field of astronomy software.
Highlights
One of the most fruitful things I have done in my break from employment is to restore a telescope to working condition in 3 weeks. It was one of the most challenging projects I have done as it involved learning to do things that were completely new to me, while planning and actually executing on them in the short time frame. Going from CAD drawing to part has become a lot less daunting now. Fortunately, I had a couple very experienced people helping me with certain challenging sub-tasks. We were all amazed when the telescope worked very well and at least 4 dozen people must have enjoyed looking through it. Here is a view of the telescope and a few build steps.
Since I single-boot Linux on my laptop, I couldn't use the well-known free eclipse photography automation software. So I ended up writing my own Python script using system calls on gphoto2 to work on Linux. My equipment is a Canon EOS 50D with a 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM lens, and my dry run with fake times seems to do "okay". It has many drawbacks, mostly around things I could not get working in a stable manner with gphoto2.
https://lnkd.in/gAtSbBCZ
I can't guarantee it will work, even more so since it's never been field tested. It's MIT Licensed, feel free to fork, modify, whatever.
