From c2a08c2b580ddf5002012d6149b9ff7a4e20a00e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Blaise Thompson <blaise@untzag.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2018 10:27:18 -0600
Subject: 2018-02-26 10:27

---
 introduction/chapter.tex | 37 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 37 insertions(+)

(limited to 'introduction/chapter.tex')

diff --git a/introduction/chapter.tex b/introduction/chapter.tex
index 3424a35..81a6b97 100644
--- a/introduction/chapter.tex
+++ b/introduction/chapter.tex
@@ -8,5 +8,42 @@
 
 \section{The CMDS Instrument}
 
+From an instrumental perspective, MR-CMDS is a problem of calibration and coordination.  %
+Within the Wright Group, each of our two main instruments are composed of roughly ten actively
+moving component hardwares. %
+Many of these components are purchased directly from vendors such as SpectraPhysics, National
+Instruments, Horiba, Thorlabs, and Newport.  %
+Others are created or heavily modified by graduate students.  %
+The Wright Group has always maintained custom acquisition software packages which control the
+complex, many-stepped dance that these components must perform to acquire MR-CMDS spectra.  %
+
 \section{Scientific Software}
 
+When I joined the Wright Group, I saw that acquisition software was a real barrier to experimental
+progress and flexibility.  %
+Graduate students had ideas for instrumental enhancements that were infeasible because of the
+challenge of incorporating the new components into the existing software ecosystem.  %
+At the same time, students were spending much of their time in lab repeatedly calibrating optical
+parametric amplifiers by hand, a process that sometimes took days.  %
+I chose to spend a significant portion of my graduate career focusing on solving these problems
+through software development.  %
+At first, I focused on improving the existing LabVIEW code.  %
+Eventually, I developed a vision for a deeply modular acquisition software that could not be
+practically created with LabVIEW.  %
+Using Python and Qt, I created a brand new acquisition software PyCMDS: built from the ground up to
+fundamentally solve historical challenges in the Group.  %
+PyCMDS offers a modular hardware model that can ``re-configure'' itself to flexibly control a
+variety of component hardware configurations.  %
+This has enabled graduate students to add and remove hardware whenever necessary, without worrying
+about a heavy additional programming burden.  %
+PyCMDS is now used to drive both MR-CMDS instruments in the Group, allowing for easy sharing of
+component hardware and lessening the total amount of software that the Group needs to maintain.  %
+Besides being more flexible, PyCMDS solves a number of other problems.  %
+It offers fully automated strategies for calibrating component hardwares, making calibration less
+arduous and more reproducible.  %
+It offers more fine-grained control of data acquisition and timing, enabling more complex
+algorithms to quickly acquire artifact-free results.  %
+In conjunction with other algorithmic and hardware improvements that I have made, PyCMDS has
+decreased acquisition times by up to two orders of magnitude.  %
+A companion software, WrightTools (which I also created), solves some of the processing and
+representation challenges of multidimensional data.  %
\ No newline at end of file
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