I'm Eric Mascot, a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I study physics and in particular, computational condensed matter theory. I use a lot of Fortran and Python with MPI on high performance clusters to calculate things like the energy dispersion, density of states, and quasi-particle interference patterns for a given theoretical description of a material.
Before I started physics at UIC, I was a game/app/web developer at Donuts in Tokyo. I used Unity, Cocos2D, CoronaSDK, and other engines to develop games, and mainly used Ruby on Rails to develop for web. I started as a translator in 2012, moved on to planner, then was transferred to Donuts Bangkok where I was product specialist, which basically meant "we can't fit all your job titles on this business card".
I always had an interest in coding and games since middle school where I learned ActionScript to make flash games. I made my first solar system simulation in flash without learning the equations for gravity. When I finally did learn about gravity in school, I got really interested in physics. I also always loved the cutting edge in technology, growing up with my own PC since I was 5 years old. Being able to apply cutting edge technology to research is what keeps me motivated to study physics.