Another young Anguillian has done himself, his family and country proud, in the world of academics. On July 16 2018, Mr Jose Vanterpool graduated from the University of Bristol with the degree of Master of Engineering in Computer Science, with First Class Honours.
Over the course of his degree, Jose’s main concentrations were in the areas of Cryptography, Applied and Systems Security, High-Performance Computing, Machine and Deep Learning, and Software Engineering.
For his dissertation leading to his degree, Jose’s topic was “Exploring Side Channel Attacks on General Purpose Graphics Processing Units”, an area which focused on the security of devices which are increasingly used to handle sensitive data. According to Jose, Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have become a ubiquitous element on most modern computing platforms. They are currently being utilised everywhere from mobile phones to data centres. Their increased usage comes as a result of their immense parallelism and computational ability which allows them to provide signi?cant speedups to data-intensive applications ranging from gaming to encryption. While GPUs have the advantage over Central Processing Units (CPUs) when it comes to speed, their overall security is a vastly understudied element by comparison.
In acknowledging those who have contributed to the success of his dissertation and studies, Jose wrote, “The submission of this project not only signi?es the end of my degree qualification, but also the end of the most difficult year of my life thus far. I lost my grandfather Jude Watty at the beginning of the research period, and things got progressively worse as my grandfather Maxwell Vanterpool, cousin (or rather my brother) Calan Vandyke Vanterpool, and then my stepfather Edward Labassiere followed throughout the course of the year. This made the challenges associated with completing this project seem impossible but I know all of them would have wanted me to see this through to the end. I’d like to say thank you to everyone who played a role in helping, supporting and encouraging me throughout this difficult period”.
He further stated, “I dedicate this work to their lives and their memory”.
Jose expresses sincere thanks to the almighty God for the skills, abilities, and resources he has been blessed with – that have all helped him get to where he is today. In thanking his parents, he noted the unconditional love, support and guidance they gave him. He was grateful to his friends and family for their support and encouragement throughout the course of his degree, and life in general.
Jose who was the Island Scholar in 2014, also thanked the Government of Anguilla, and by extension the people of Anguilla, for funding his studies over the course of these 4 years.
Appreciation also goes out to the High-Performance Research Group at the University of Bristol for allowing him special access to their HPC Zoo cluster for the purpose of conducting his research, and to his Supervisor, Dr. Daniel Page, for the incredible amount of help, guidance, and advice that he provided over the course of the research period.
Jose, who will be returning in August to take up work, stated, “One of the ways I want to give back is to introduce avenues which enable the youth of Anguilla to get exposed to, and be able to explore, the world of technology in the hope that one day they may be able to realise their true potential”.
Jose is the son of Joseph Vanterpool and Judy Watty.
– Contributed
