Robert Schaffer

Brookhaven National Laboratory

National Synchrotron Light Source II
Bldg. 741
P.O. Box 5000
Upton, NY 11973-5000

(631) 344-2501
rschaffer@bnl.gov

Expertise | Education | Appointments

Expertise

Robert has experience programming software to control hardware systems, both at a low and at a high level. He has programmed software to interact with FPGAs and quickly process multiple streams of data. In addition, Robert has written software to coordinate interactions between disparate devices, including motors, triggers, detectors and bunch pattern control.

Robert has programmed controls and analysis software in Python, C and C++. In addition, he has experience modelling systems using Monte Carlo simulations and with simple machine learning tools. Alongside his programming experience, Robert is an experienced physicist and mathematician.

Education

• Ph.D. in Physics, University of Toronto, Canada (2016). "Quantum Spin Liquids in Kitaev and Kagome systems", Supervisor: Y. B. Kim
• B.S. in Mathematical Physics and Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo, Canada (2009)

Professional Appointments

After completing his degree, Robert worked with a startup company researching possible applications of existing and predicted quantum computing devices to machine learning. In this company, he was responsible for understanding the current status of the technology and developing applications which would benefit from the expected technologies available in the near future.

Following this, Robert began work as a controls engineer at the European XFEL. He worked extensively with the MID (Materials Imaging and Dynamics) beamline, as well as across the facility as a whole.

In 2021, Robert joined BNL as a Technology Engineer, where he works primarily with the structural biology program at NSLS-II.