Sowmya Balasubramanian joins ESnet

As the newest member of the Department of Energy’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), Sowmya Balasubramanian will be working with an international collaboration to develop and maintain perfSONAR (PERFormance Service Oriented Network monitoring ARchitecture), a network testing and troubleshooting system. During an internship at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory last summer, Balasubramanian was one of the primary developers of ESnet’s Network Weathermap monitoring software. “We were impressed by her ability to learn on her feet, her enthusiasm and hard work,” said Brian Tierney, head of the ESnet Advanced Network Technologies Group.

Balasubramanian, originally from Chennai, a city in South India, graduated with a Master’s degree in information networking from Carnegie Mellon University. Her graduate projects included developing a communications interface for systems in a distributed network, a small “real time operating system” for embedded systems, a peer-to-peer photo sharing application as well as mobile phone applications. Her interests in the Internet and mobile communications led her to specialize in electronics and communications in her undergraduate education at SSN College of Engineering of Anna University in India.

"As a kid, I had always been curious about how the various communication devices worked at home." Balasubramanian said. "In high school, I learned a little about computers and became fascinated at what this technology could do."