Obituary of Matt T Yourst

Vestal - "A gift lost too soon". Matt T. Yourst, 38, suffered a massive blood clot in his lungs on January 8th depriving his brain of oxygen. But we know that it was his extraordinary mind that guided him to heaven on January 17, 2019. Surviving are Matt's parents, Steve & Connie Yourst (Vestal); half-sister, Melanie Schmidt; step-brother, Mark Yourst Gentile; Dave Schmidt; niece and nephew, Anna & Ben Schmidt; aunts, Trish Koontz & Carole Kline and extended families. * Matt's brilliant young mind enabled him to : * write his first software program at age 6 * at 8, design his "Thermodynamic Heat Furnace" for his Vestal Hills Elementary Science Fair. * at 11, after seeing his graphic designs and his critique of their software, AutoDesk Corp offered to continually provide Matt with their newest "Animator" software for his evaluation (not knowing his age until they met in California). While there, he sat in on a physics conference presentation and monopolized the Q&A with his thoughts on black holes and the origin of the universe. * again while 11, he detailed his concept for an optical computer system entitled "Hyperprocessing Architecture" which he presented at IBM's "Blue Sky" summer course. * Over the next few years, Matt mastered most programming languages and operating systems so that he could develop his own enhanced versions...even writing to Bill Gates re: the deficits of the Windows operating system. He also began consulting for companies locally, in the US, and in England on both hardware and software. * at 14, Matt began writing his own operating system/emulator, "LSxPower", which enabled any program written for IBM's OS/2 operating system to run unchanged under Windows, DOS, UNIX, etc. After completing the 17,000 lines of code, in 1995 at 15 he founded Laserstars Technologies to sell his creation worldwide, handling orders and customer support after school to users in Singapore, Germany, Canada, Russia, Italy, England, Netherlands, etc. * While in middle school Matt also began taking Computer Science courses at Binghamton U. & used his uncanny technical writing ability at 16 to author a lead article "Inside Java Class Files" in an international software journal. * While at Vestal H.S., Matt showed his altruistic side, his desire to offer his skills wherever, whenever they were needed. He was the director and founding member of the Vestal School District Internet committee and system administrator for the high school's Library Media Center where he tutored and assisted staff and students. Matt also found time to volunteer his computer and science expertise at the Kopernik Observatory, the Discovery Center in Binghamton and for the regional SciMaTech Fair and Visiting Wizards programs held for Broome County schools. * In the summer of his junior year, Matt (as a paid researcher) conducted extensive research at Cornell University's Theory Center Visualization Lab (the youngest to ever do so) writing many programs to help visualize molecular interactions in a life size 3D environment , while collaborating with NIH and NASA on computational biochemistry and astrophysics. * While submitting applications and preparing for life at a university, Matt's ability was publicized both in a NY Times and an extensive Binghamton Press article. Having won a national Electronic Data Systems Corp scholarship (1 of 4 of 8000 applicants), Matt's biggest thrill was " Wow, I get to ride in a limo for the presentation in Washington DC". * Selecting MIT as his first choice (because of their independent research opportunities), Matt began there in the fall of 1999. * He soon established himself as a unique scientific talent. As a freshman he was chosen to be on the cover of MIT's Alumni magazine (Spectrvm) along with his cover story. Matt did significant Media Lab research in support of MIT's holographic 3D printer project resulting in his selection to teach a summer course in holography. His subsequent time at MIT was spent primarily in research at MIT's CSL (Computer Science Lab). * Grades were never Matt's top priority, learning and creating were. As his freshman MIT physics professor once said, Matt preferred not to memorize a formula but to derive it when needed on his exams. * While at MIT he also increased his love of photography, becoming a staff photographer for their newspaper, meeting and photographing many celebrities/dignitaries. His spectacular 2001 photograph of MIT's "Infinite Corridor" (ie; MIThenge) is still considered the consummate photo of this unique event, and has been used on multiple book covers. * Matt, returned home to obtain his MS and complete his PhD thesis work in computer engineering at Binghamton U. where under his mentor Prof. Kanad Ghose, he taught portions of undergrad and grad courses and authored/co-authored many major research papers, presenting one in Spain. To illustrate his varied interests, he co-authored four optics/facial recognition papers, including an award winning (2005's "best paper award") paper on "Hyper-Resolution" for enhancing photo image detail. * Most notably, while at BU he developed PTLsim, an open source microprocessor simulator that is the simulator of choice used by major vendors (AMD & Intel) and hundreds of universities throughout the world. His initial coordination of the open source enhancements to PTLsim will ensure that PTLsim will live on for many years in industry and academia. * Opportunity prompted him to take his patent applications and move to "Silicon Valley" and establish his company "Strandera" using his "Multicore Strand Based Multithreading" technology for use with all microprocessors. To support his own research, while there, he independently without any AMD assistance was the first and only person to completely reverse engineer AMD's then current microprocessors. Matt subsequently invented many other software/hardware enhancements to support Strandera's technology. While waiting for Intel/AMD's hardware technology to catch up to his innovative "strand" idea, Matt continued inventing many novel software/hardware enhancement techniques and worked/consulted for AMD, Intel, Unity Systems, and Tilera Corp, even working with Intel's lead architect to highlight some of the defects he found in their (then current) microprocessor and it's support manual. * While in California, he found time to continue his love for nature and photography. He developed techniques for taking panoramic photos, resulting in a photo of his favorite spot in the Santa Cruz Mountains called Russian Ridge. When two colleagues saw his spectacular 4 foot panoramic photo they asked to purchase one for their own homes. * Matt found his way back home to continue his self exploration of graphic/web design. But to also satisfy his need to continue doing scientific/technical work, he began researching the growth of home electrical utility "digital smart meters" and the devastating result of their defective design/installations in many parts of our country and Canada. He read all the smart meter vendor's technical manuals, identifying each and every design flaw but giving credit to the 1 or 2 manufacturers that satisfied his demanding safety criteria. *To better illustrate his concern, Matt wanted to design an informative, but satirical, website utilizing his graphic design skills. But to encompass everything he wanted in his website, he found that the design tools he needed did not exist, so as he so often did, he developed his own state-of-the-art tools/techniques. Although Matt ran out of time to put in the final touches and web browser compatibility fixes that he wanted to make, please enjoy the humor, the technical expertise and the extraordinary graphic design skills that he exhibits in his smart meter expose website. If your browser "is" compatible, view it full screen at : www.murder-by-meter.org. Matt was predeceased by his maternal grandparents, Les and Rene Lawrio, and aunts Sherrill and Carol. Also, paternal grandparents, Mary and Steve Yourst (of Ohio)....and Matt's two golden retrievers dancing at his bare feet. In his life, Matt never believed in having funerals, therefore we are honoring that belief. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made in Matt's memory to the Broome County Humane Society. Condolences may be made at the Coleman & Daniels Funeral Home LLC website (www.colemananddaniels.com) Our deepest gratitude for the professional and compassionate care of Matt and his family by the Wilson Memorial Hospital ICU doctors and extraordinary nurses. * Above all, we will always remember his wicked funny humor, his constant use of puns, his ability to have an opinion on just about everything, and his never ending caring and love for his family. Even though Matt's light has gone out, his vision will go on through his contributions to science and technology, his extensive tissue donation...and our lasting memories of him.