[throwaway9982]

I'm not the OP, but here's what I did at NASA that I found interesting:

- Developed the space lidar that will measure the polar ice cap melting

- Created a dashboard to monitor a spacecraft in deep space (and then ran ops for it)

- Developed learning models on a top500 supercomputer

- Optimization of 1000-GPU (yes) detailed simulation of the earth's magnetosphere

Yes, I knew that the industry will pay more, but honestly, I was young and just wanted to have a good time and stay around family in the area. The other jobs in the area didn't seem as exciting.