Institute of
Technology, University of
Washington, Tacoma - Assistant Professor
Former Caltech
Infospheres Research Group Member
Former Avery House
Secretary (1996-2002)
Curriculum Vitae (PDF)
1900 Commerce St. Box 358426 Tacoma, WA 98402
I am currently an Assistant Professor of Computing and Software Systems at the Institute of Technology in the Tacoma campus of the University of Washington. So far, I have taught object-oriented programming, discrete mathematics, and computer ethics. More detailed information about my current work will (eventually) be available on my professional home page.
I was previously a Research Scientist in Computer Science at the California Institute of Technology, from which I received my bachelor's degree in June 1996, my master's degree in June 1998, and my Ph.D. in June 2002 (defended 27 July 2001). My work there focused on the area of Crisis Management.
Before that, I was an Instructor in Computer Science at Caltech, where I taught CS 141a (Distributed Computation Laboratory) in the Winter 2002 and 2003 quarters, and CS 141b and CS 3 (Introduction to Software Engineering) in the Spring 2002 and 2003 quarters.
As a graduate student, I was one of the primary members of the Caltech Infospheres Research Group, a "subgroup" of Professor K. Mani Chandy's Compositional Systems Research Group. My Ph.D. thesis was entitled Dynamic UNITY, and my M.S. thesis was entitled A Preliminary Investigation into Dynamic Distributed Workflow. In the course of preparing these theses I ended up creating a new LaTeX2e class for formatting documents to fit the Caltech thesis requirements, which is available here, and which is now the recommended template for Caltech Ph.D. theses (see the Caltech Library System Format Guide for Electronic Theses).
As an undergraduate, I majored in computer science (well, really engineering and applied science), and I was the first person ever to graduate from Caltech with an undergraduate minor, in the new Science, Ethics and Society option (which, coincidentally, is the only option in which undergraduates can minor). My senior thesis for SES was entitled Privacy Issues in Computerized Communications.
I also worked for the computer science department for five years as a teaching assistant - for CS20, the introductory course for computer science majors, from September 1994 through June 1996; for CS141, a distributed systems project course, from September 1996 through June 1997 and September 1998 through June 1999; and for CS138, an algorithms course, from September 1997 through June 1998 and from September 1999 through June 2000.
Aside from academics, I also moonlight as CEO/head programmer of TFF Enterprises, a software company founded in 1989 which released 2 shareware programs for the Apple IIGS before coursework temporarily curtailed program development (though there is a piece of software, CGPSA, that is under active development).