Shameless mom brag UPDATE in first post.

[gardenmom5]

1ds presented his MS thesis today.

 

His prof introduced him by saying the scope of his work was more typical of PhD students, very rarely MS students.  And that he'd rewritten a software testing program* they'd used for years so instead of taking *hours* to run a sample, it was run in minutes.  He described it as, of "breakthrough" significance.   1600x's faster than before he "fixed" it.

This is the kid who didn't like math (he had a lot of holes in his math education) - but decided he wanted to be an engineer.

UPDATE:

He came over this evening for Pi day.  His professors want him to go for a PhD.  He did the masters that applies to a PhD. (there are terminal masters that do not apply), so it's "only" another three years. (the school pays a stipend.)* He wants a life.  But if his employer wants to pay him to do it . . . He can always go back at a later date.

 

* I recall SWB talking about the "stipend" she had when doing her doc. . . . Her school student insurance considered an epidural an extra.

Edited March 15, 2022 by gardenmom5

[Lilaclady]

Congratulations to your son. Way to go !!!

[Kassia]

That is HUGE!  So glad you posted!  What an accomplishment - you both must be so proud!  🙂 

[saraha]

Wow!

[Amethyst]

Wow! So impressive!! 

[Melissa in Australia]

Congratulations 

[Elizabeth86]

You have every right to brag!!

[Catwoman]

He has always been so smart! It seems like only yesterday that he decided to teach himself math so he could become an engineer!!!

[gardenmom5]

53 minutes ago, Catwoman said:

He has always been so smart! It seems like only yesterday that he decided to teach himself math so he could become an engineer!!!

He has.  But learning disabilities and a long time undiagnosed pinched nerve were challenging for him.

[chocolate-chip chooky]

I love mum brag threads 🤗

[Kareni]

Kudos to your son, @gardenmom5, and congratulations to you, too!

Regards,

Kareni

[Frances]

5 hours ago, gardenmom5 said:

 

* I recall SWB talking about the "stipend" she had when doing her doc. . . . Her school student insurance considered an epidural an extra.

My school student insurance when I was in a doctoral program was amazing. It covered everything for my pregnancy which  included multiple trip to the hospital for pre-term labor, bed rest with home monitoring for 8 weeks, and the actual birth. And this was for a pregnancy and delivery 2,000 miles away from my school where I was registered in absentia. Now this was insurance I paid for and not part of my stipend. But it was cheap and the coverage ended up being amazing. I think we paid a few hundred dollars total for everything. Even better, the women’s clinic where I was a patient handled everything with the insurance company for free, even though it was a company they had never dealt with before. It was such a blessing during a very stressful time, as my husband was in grad school.

At the time my husband and I attended grad school, I think it was very rare for universities to provide health insurance for grad students. But now many universities have some pretty good paid/partially paid health insurance benefits for grad students in addition to paid tuition and living stipends.

[gardenmom5]

5 minutes ago, Frances said:

 

At the time my husband and I attended grad school, I think it was very rare for universities to provide health insurance for grad students. But now many universities have some pretty good paid/partially paid health insurance benefits for grad students in addition to paid tuition and living stipends.

They have a medical school, so they do.

[Hannah]

Well done to you son!  You can be a proud Mom indeed!

[rutheart]

Did he rewrite the software to use a GPU to handle floating point computations?

[Ausmumof3]

Yay! I love hearing about homeschool graduates doing well!

[TexasProud]

So incredibly awesome!!!

 

[gardenmom5]

1 hour ago, rutheart said:

Did he rewrite the software to use a GPU to handle floating point computations?

I couldn't describe what he did, but it was how the data sets were used.  I do recall there were at least 800K+ data sets that it had to look through? for each point in a simulation every time was run.  (and it would look at them multiple times in one simulation.)    From the description from both him and his prof, this sounded like a software for running sims they've used for years.   ds did say they didn't run sims very much (and this was probably why.), but ds had A LOT of sims to run and he didn't have hours for each simulation.

 

 

[rutheart]

Did he use multithreading to make it check several data points at a time? I know I'm asking a bunch of nosy questions that aren't your area of expertise, but I am trying to understand what kind of coding changes he made, to see if he'd be a good fit for some jobs I know are available. If he's not interested in a new job, there's no need to find out the answer.

Regardless, congrats!

[gardenmom5]

4 hours ago, rutheart said:

Did he use multithreading to make it check several data points at a time? I know I'm asking a bunch of nosy questions that aren't your area of expertise, but I am trying to understand what kind of coding changes he made, to see if he'd be a good fit for some jobs I know are available. If he's not interested in a new job, there's no need to find out the answer.

Regardless, congrats!

He's an aeronautical engineer.  He has his dream entry job.

[Mom_to3]

1 hour ago, gardenmom5 said:

He's an aeronautical engineer.  He has his dream entry job.

Congratulations on the thesis defense! That's amazing. Since you mentioned that he "wants a life" as a reason to not pursue a PhD; I think life as a PhD student can actually be pretty amazing (if the PhD advisor is pleasant) despite the meager stipends - especially once classes are out of the way, which it looks like they would be if he'd continue at that same university. 

[gardenmom5]

2 hours ago, Mom_to3 said:

Congratulations on the thesis defense! That's amazing. Since you mentioned that he "wants a life" as a reason to not pursue a PhD; I think life as a PhD student can actually be pretty amazing (if the PhD advisor is pleasant) despite the meager stipends - especially once classes are out of the way, which it looks like they would be if he'd continue at that same university. 

his girlfriend, whom he'd like to marry - has particularly expensive medical bills.