Jason SooHoo

After completing my BA in Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst in 2001, I joined MIT Haystack as a part-time IT support staff member. Quickly realizing the extent of amazing research and developing technology here, I began getting involved in many of the projects, including network data transfers from many of the geodetic VLBI stations around the world to the Haystack correlator as well as assisting in the development of the Mark 6 data recorder.

I was then offered a full-time staff position working on IT and project support, which led to field site operations as well as system commissioning and deployment for projects including the EHT and VGOS. This work gave me opportunities to travel to many sites around the world such as GGAO (MD, USA) and KPGO (HI, USA) for VGOS and OVRO–CARMA (CA, USA), LMT (Puebla, Mexico), SPT (South Pole, Antarctica), and NOEMA (Plateau de Bure, France) for the EHT project.

I am also involved in several polar science projects like SIDEx, Chasing Icebergs, and MACAWS, working on system development and deployment. These projects are leading to new understandings of our planet’s environmental and climate changes. And in our space technology research, I am the MOXIE project Operations Lead, where we will demonstrate the production of oxygen on Mars using its atmosphere.

At the Observatory, as IT Manager and part of the IT team, we aim to provide the best support and capability possible to facilitate the incredible science and technology undertaken by all of our research scientists and engineers. Being a part of the many fields of research has been an amazing journey.