Hi! You have found Michael Milligan's web page at the University of Minnesota Department of Astronomy (yes, that address is obfuscated slightly; I get enough unsolicited commercial email as it is). Chances are, if you've actually found this page, you already know as much as you need to about me, or else you're about to e-mail me and ask. As such, I'll keep it brief.

If you got here looking for my GriPhyN/Chimera related work, you should look at my work log/issue tracking system or at this page about Chimera.

Who?

Since September 2003, my home has been balmy Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the graduate program of the Department of Astronomy . I belong to Shaul Hanany's research group, working on instruments with which to study the cosmic microwave background. I also teach one lab section of Ast 1001, the introductory astronomy course for non-majors.

I graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. in physics, specializing in astrophysics, and a credit or two short of a second major in math. Contrary to what everyone seems to think, I have never studied CompSci -- my jobs have just tended to involve writing code. Before leaving Chicago, I worked for Ian Foster and the Grid Physics Network (GriPhyN) generally trying to put together a worldwide distributed supercomputing research grid, and specifically trying to get our loose network of resources to crunch through the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) looking for galaxy clusters. Although Dr. Foster, etc., could care less about the actual cluster catalogs, I worked closely with Jim Annis of Fermilab to get the science code working, so that he can use the resulting cluster survey to look for dark matter and constrain the neutrino mass.

I advocate free software, and as such mostly use the Debian GNU/Linux operating system. Since quite a few people have the inexplicable habit of asking me for recommendations on software, this page addresses that. I'm trying to slowly convert the people I correspond with to the ranks of the privacy-aware e-mail encrypters (although most of them are still at the "What are these wierd gibberish attachments you keep sending me?" stage).

My home for four years was Mathews House; they don't have a web page right now (that I know of). When I was a student, I ran the U of C's SPS chapter with an iron fist; then I spent a couple of years as their mascot. The ScavHunt is uniquely UofC madness held every May; if you're in the area, you owe it to yourself to take a gander. My team (FIST III: Deleuzean Potato) came in fourth last year, and featured notably in "The Hunt", a documentary from Periphrastic Film.

PGP

I use GPG, a free-software clone of Pretty Good Privacy, the most widely-used e-mail encryption program available. I've written an overview of what encryption is, what you can do with it, and why you should use it. The easiest way to get PGP is to go here and follow the download links for the kind of computer you have. Read some documentation while you're there. My public key is below (PGP et al can extract it from the text on this page) or here as a separate file.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
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=NXXj
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----