Sean Chester is a long way from home, but he’s still right at home no matter where he’s running.
Dr. Chester, as he’s known as now, is in Norway and will be living there a couple of more years. The former Chemainus Secondary student became a fixture in many running events after graduation and continues to obtain top results.
Chester recently won the Trondheim Marathon in Norway in 2:45:06. He was well ahead of runner-up Stian Karlsen of Norway, who finished in 2:50:42.
Chester was a perennial contender during his many appearances in the Cobble Hill 10K, part of the FrontRunners Vancouver Island Running Series. He placed in the top three there numerous times.
Chester is a postdoctoral fellow in the Data and Information Management group at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway’s top university for sciences and the home institution of four Nobel Prize Laureates.
His research focuses on designing algorithms for managing and querying data on modern, highly parallel architectures such as graphics processing cards and multi-socket CPUs. This basic research, which typically results in papers at top conferences and academic-ready software, enables other researchers to conduct experiments in minutes or hours when it would otherwise take days or weeks. He works closely with researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark, EPFL in Switzerland, Sheffield University in England, and the University of Victoria.
As a student at UVic, Chester obtained his PhD in 2013 under the co-supervision of Alex Thomo, Venkatesh Srinivasan, and Sue Whitesides. It’s also where he competed on the varsity athletics team for two years and was selected for the national collegiate championships in cross-country.
From September 2013 until October 2015, Chester was a postdoctoral researcher in the Data-Intensive Systems group of Ira Assent at Aarhus University.