Aaron Liao
Position: Vice President, Developer Experience, Dolby Laboratories
City of Residence: Orange County, CA
Education: BS Computer Engineering, UC San Diego 2005
Aaron Liao received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from UCSD and went to Microsoft where he spent 6 years working across various product and business units. Prior to that, Aaron’s experience included teaching summer session computer science at UC Berkeley and serving as an intelligence officer for the US government. He has also worked at a number of smaller startup companies including BitTorrent, Connectifier (acquired by LinkedIn in 2016), and as Director of Developer Evangelism at DocuSign through it’s IPO in 2018 (NASDAQ: DOCU). Most recently, Aaron was head of worldwide developer marketing at Amazon Web Services. Outside of work, Aaron is a competitive marksman and enjoys tinkering with cars and technology.
Justin Allen
Position: Director of Customer Engineering, Striim Inc.
City of Residence: San Diego, CA
Education: BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2010
Justin received his bachelors of Computer Science from UC San Diego in 2010 specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Security, and is a member of the CSE Alumni Advisory Board since 2013.
Justin currently leads Customer Engineering at Striim, building a customer-centric growth and adoption organization focused on software engineering and solution based approaches to Striim's mission critical deployments with Fortune 500 and Global 1000 customers. He joined Striim in 2014 as part of Series B1 round and laid the successful foundation for Series C and high growth multiples, working in multiple technical role capacities as a development engineer, to senior solution architect, and product management.
Prior to joining Striim, Justin was a Software Engineer at Teradata Labs for 5 years in critical enterprises products, developing code on infrastructure level server software, web applications, and security features of these products using Java, C/C++, Java Script, and SQL. Justin also also pioneered Teradata’s University Coding Competition, which he inaugurated at UCSD in 2013 and expanded in 2014 to UCSD and Stanford.
Outside of startup life, Justin and his wife of 10 years, french bulldog Chester, love to go camping, traveling around the world, culinary touring and experimentation, volunteer and charitable work with Helen Woodward and GA Pilot of Comanche and Cessna's around Southern CA.
Erik Buchanan
Position: Co-founder & CTO, CloseFactor
City of Residence: Irvine, CA
Education: BS & MS Computer Science, UC San Diego
Erik Buchanan received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from UC San Diego in 2007, and continued at UCSD in the 5-Year Masters program. He specialized in security research in the Systems and Networking group of the Computer Science and Engineering Department. Erik worked as a software engineer and researcher at tech companies including Google, Microsoft, Intuit, and Websense. He ran product and engineering at a recruiting startup called Connectifier, which was acquired by LinkedIn in 2016. Erik led the Artificial Intelligence organization for LinkedIn Talent Solutions, and built a company-wide educational program called AI Academy for LinkedIn. In 2020, Erik co-founded the sales intelligence platform CloseFactor.
Nik Devereaux
Position: Engineering Director, Viasat
City of Residence: San Diego, CA
Education: BA Computer Science 2001, MAS AESE 2011
Nik Devereaux is an engineering director for Viasat in Carlsbad, CA. He spent about 10 years as a software engineer and team lead before moving into engineering management. He is very involved with UCSD, serving on alumni or industry advisory boards for CSE, Jacobs School of Engineering, and HDSI.
Anu DiCarlo (Mupparthi)
Position: Google Photos
City of Residence: Sunnyvale, CA
Education: MS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2011; BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2008
Upon completion of her Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego in December 2008 and August 2011 respectively, Anu joined Google to work on its social team, Google+. Currently, Anu is an engineer on the Photos team for Google+ at Google. She is passionate about UX and UI in Google's photos sphere. When she is not an engineer, she is a mother of two incredible children, ages 10 and 7. She enjoys spending time with them, and taking their pictures. On the rare occasion that she finds a little time for herself, she enjoys reading and dancing.
Lindsey Fowler (DeSalvo)
Position: Director Engineering, Remitly
City of Residence: Seattle, WA
Education: BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2005
After graduating with her BS in Computer Science in 2005, Lindsey started at Amazon as a Software Developer. Over 17 years, she navigated three different positions in six teams, including personalization, Amazon Prime, and most recently Amazon Fresh. In 2022 Lindsey moved to Remitly, a company focused on providing financial services to immigrants. There she manages data and high performance systems to support world-class treasury, accounting, and reconciliation operations at scale. Lindsey is passionate about creating psychologically safe teams at scale and innovative engineering cultures.
Taner Halicioglu
Position: Lecturer, UC San Diego; Founder, HDSI; Founder, Data Science Alliance; Founder, Keshif Ventures
City of Residence: San Diego, CA
Education: BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 1996
After graduating UCSD, Taner moved back to the Bay Area and was an early-hire at a web hosting start-up (called "Internet Systems, Inc", at the time) doing system and network administration, as well as tools engineering. Following ISI, he was an early-hire at another startup, Loudcloud and is now part of HP. In 2002, he started work at eBay, concentrating on monitoring and tools. In October 2004, he decided to leave eBay for an unknown startup called "TheFacebook" - which at the time appeared to be "just another social network, but only for college students". In December 2009, he left the Bay Area (and Facebook) to move down to Orange County to work for Blizzard Entertainment (the game company) as the Lead Reliability Engineer for the new-and-improved battle.net service. In December of 2011, he left Blizzard and moved to San Diego in 2012. Since early 2013, he has been lecturing in the CSE department at UCSD. He is also the founder of the Halicioglu Data Science Institute (HDSI) on the UCSD campus, as well as the San Diego based non-profit, Data Science Alliance. Additionally, he is an active angel investor and advisor to startups through Keshif Ventures.
Zach Johnson
Position: Co-founder, LMNT
City of Residence: San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Education: BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2014
After graduating from UC San Diego in 2014, Zach moved to the Bay Area to work at Google[x] as a software engineer - two years later he became the manager for his team. He spent 8.5 years at Google across Google Glass, WearOS, and Android, and in 2022 he switched gears and is now a co-founder at LMNT.com working in the generative AI space.
While at UCSD Zach served as a CSE tutor for 11 of his 12 quarters, and credits a lot of his early career success to the tutor program giving him the opportunity to cement what he learned through teaching fellow students.
Rick Ord
Position: CSE Lecturer (retired), UC San Diego
City of Residence: San Diego, CA
Education: MS Computer Science, UC San Diego 1987
Rick Ord took his first computer-related course at UC San Diego Extension in 1981 in his late 20s. He received his M.S. in Computer Science from UC San Diego in 1987 while working as a Unix SysAdmin in what is now Educational Technology Services (ETS). He was Director of the Computing Facility in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) from 1988 to 2001. Rick has been a Lecturer in CSE since 1991 converting to full-time Lecturer in 2001. He has taught 12 different CSE courses and 11 different Extension courses. He was recognized with numerous teaching awards. He served as an advisor to several student orgs and helped grow the CSE Tutor program. He retired in 2019, but continues to be engaged with the CSE and UC San Diego community.
Kylie Taitano
Position: Senior Software Engineer, TurboTax Online, Intuit San Diego
City of Residence: San Diego, CA
Education: BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2014
Kylie received her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from UC San Diego in 2014. As an undergrad, she was a tutor for several lower-division CS classes taught by Gary Gillespie, and served on the inaugural board of the Women in Computing, devoting her senior year as the 2013-2014 President. By day, Kylie is a Senior Software Engineer at Intuit, working on the TurboTax Online Investor team. She also currently serves as the co-founder and CEO of Code With Her, a San Diego-based 501c3 nonprofit where she gets to fulfill her passion for creating opportunities for young women and minorities to succeed in tech. To date, over 2,000 students across the country have participated in Code With Her's coding and technology workshops.
Born and raised on the beautiful US Pacific Island territory of Guam, Kylie is proud of her Filipina and indigenous CHamoru heritage. In her spare time, Kylie enjoys volunteering with Silayan Filipina, a Filipina women's empowerment non-profit, hosting at the House of Chamorros at the International Cottages in Balboa Park, and taking her two pandemic pups to Fiesta Island Dog Park.
Rahul Sabnis
Position: Software Engineer at Google
City of Residence: San Jose, CA
Education: BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2019
Since graduating, Rahul has been working as a software engineer on the Android Bluetooth team at Google in Mountain View. He has been working on making sure device to device experiences work seamlessly. While at UCSD, Rahul was the president of the Computer Science and Engineering Society (CSES) and a tutor for CSE 11, 12, and 30. Outside of work, Rahul enjoys staying active--he plays basketball, does Bollywood dance, and strength trains.
Emily Deere
Position: EVP of Engineering at Shadowbox
City of Residence: San Diego, CA
Education: MAS Architecture-based Enterprise Systems Engineering, UC San Diego, 2013
Emily Deere is the EVP of Engineering at Shadowbox. Emily has over 20 years of experience in the technology industry, specifically in product management and engineering. Before joining Shadowbox, Emily was the Vice President of Engineering at Ad-Juster from 2018 through its acquisition in 2020 by DoubleVerify where she continued as their Vice President. From 2015 to 2018 Emily joined ARS National Services as their Chief Information Officer. Prior to ARS, Emily was the Executive Director of Enterprise Information Systems at University of California at San Diego. In 2006, she became CTO of Data Collections at Scranton before which she was Director of Engineering for Mitek Systems. Emily began her career at Cardiff Software in 1991 as the Director of Product Management. Emily Deere has a Master of Arts in Architecture-based Enterprise Systems Engineering from the University of California, San Diego - Rady School of Management and a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science from UC San Diego. Among her other exemplary talents Emily has been granted 3 Patents and was featured in the San Diego Magazine as a “2012 Top Tech Executive.” In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family and 3 dogs and playing cards with friends.
Adam Rosenstein
Position: Product Manager, The Trade Desk
City of Residence: Dana Pointe, CA
Education: MS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2019; BS Applied Mathematics, BS Chemical Engineering, University of Rochester 2017
Adam Rosenstein graduated from UCSD in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Prior to attending UCSD, Adam taught high school chemistry & math. He leveraged his Master’s degree to pivot his career into Software Engineering. As a student, Adam published research about the Impostor Phenomenon and its prevalence among Computer Science students. After graduating, he joined The Trade Desk as a software engineer working as a full-stack web developer on the Experiences team before transitioning to Product Management primarily focusing on the company's API customers. Adam has frequently returned to UCSD (both virtually and in person) to advise CSE MS students on networking, optimizing their time as a student, and navigating their career/internship searches.
Joe Pasquale
Position: CSE Professor, UC San Diego
City of Residence: San Diego
Joe Pasquale is a professor in the CSE Department, having been on the faculty since 1987. As Faculty Advisor to the CSE Alumni Board, he enjoys working with CSE alumni who represent our best and brightest and who have selflessly devoted themselves to giving back and helping our future generations of students.
Gary Gillespie
Position: Alumni and Emeriti UC San Diego
City of Residence: San Diego
Professor Gary Gillespie came to UCSD as a Revelle College freshman in Fall 1981. After struggling to stay in school, he returned in Fall 1986 and became a CSE tutor. His first position after graduating with a BS degree in Computer Engineering in Fall 1990 was as a Software Engineer at Xerox Corporation, while he was also a part-time graduate
student in CSE. In December 1991, he started as a Software Engineer at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). In Spring 1994, he was invited by CSE faculty to teach CSE 62A, Introduction to Computer Science. That led to CSE 77 (C++ Programming) in Summer 1994 and teaching the first quarter of CSE 12 (Basic Data Structures & Object Oriented Design) in Fall 1994. While at SAIC, he taught one class per quarter until he completed his Masters of Engineering degree in Spring 1999, and he then was offered a part-time career position as a Lecturer in Computer Science & Engineering. After working for 17 years as both a Senior Software Engineer at SAIC and Lecturer in CSE at UCSD, he transitioned to a full-time Lecturer position until Fall 2021. During that time, he taught 66 quarters of CSE 12, 27 quarters of CSE 15L (Software Tools & Techniques), 17 quarters of CSE 110 (Software Engineering), 5 years of the Summer Program for Incoming Students (SPIS), 3 years of the CSE Transfer Academy, a variety of other classes, established the CSE Tutor Training program, sponsored academic internships, directed multiple student group projects, served on the CSE Undergraduate Committee for 20 years, and supervised almost 700 undergraduate tutors for his classes. Also during that time, he received one campus-wide Academic Integrity Award, one Best Teacher award from the UCSD’s Panhellenic Society, one CSE Department Teacher of the Year award Selected by Ballot of the Students, one Mentor Recognition Award, and numerous certificates of Appreciation from the Office for Students with Disabilities. In his final quarter teaching in Fall 2021, he started as the Senior Director of Engineering at iboss Cybersecurity, a company started by one of my former students. He was promoted to Vice-President of Engineering in January 2022, and he retired from all employment in February 2023. In Fall 2023, he became an advisory member of the CSE Alumni Board, a mentor in the UCSD Emeriti Mentor Program, and he remains engaged with Revelle
College.
- Past Board Members
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Neha Chachra
Position: Research Scientist, Facebook
City of Residence: Redwood City, CA
Education: MS and PhD Computer Science, UC San Diego; BS Computer Science from Nanyang Technological University, SingaporeNeha received her doctorate from the Systems and Networking security group in 2015. During her time as a grad student, she was involved with many CSE organizations including the CSE Graduate Student Association and the Graduate Women in Computing group. After leaving UCSD, she has been working on protecting Facebook users from spam and malware. Her interests include hiking, camping, dancing, painting, traveling, meeting people, and coffee.
Alvin Chen
Position: Data Scientist II, Microsoft Research
City of Residence: Seattle, WA
Education: BS Computer Engineering, UC San Diego 2013Upon receiving his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from UCSD in 2013, Alvin joined Microsoft to work on Excel as a software engineer. After shipping the first version of Excel Universal App on Android, iOS, and Windows, Alvin transferred to Microsoft Research as the youngest research engineer and worked under the Applied Artificial Intelligence group. In the beginning of 2016, Alvin switched roles to become a data scientist and focused his effort on building Microsoft Academic Graph, the data source for Cortana Scholar and Academic Search. Outside of work, Alvin is a competitive basketball player and snowboarder.
Maritza Borunda
Position: Manager for Engineering Development at Qualcomm
City of Residence: Chula Vista, CA
Education: BA, Computer Science and Engineering, Human Development, UC San Diego 1998Maritza Borunda is a Manager for Engineering Development at Qualcomm, where she is an internal consultant on various technical initiatives. She currently leads the educational / enrichment activities in the areas of AI and Hardware Security for a global workforce of 30,000+ engineers.
Prior to working at Qualcomm, Maritza worked for several Fortune 500 companies as a software engineer. Her work has taken her around the world, in assignments ranging from working NATO contracts on behalf of the U.S. Army to writing operating systems and integrating complex software into existing systems.
A member of SHPE (Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers) and AISES (American Indian Science and Engineering Society) since her college days, Maritza continues to be involved with the student community as a mentor and workshop facilitator.
Alex Gantman
Position: Vice President of Engineering for Qualcomm Technologies Inc.
City of Residence: Solana Beach, CA
Education: BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 1998, and MS in Computer Science UC San Diego 2001Alex joined Qualcomm in 1996 as a software engineer. After he received his Master’s degree specializing in Cryptography and Network Security in 2001, Alex transitioned to a product security role where he focused on architectural risk assessments, secure system design, and secure protocol analysis and design. Today, Alex Gantman serves as Vice President of Engineering for Qualcomm Technologies Inc. He is responsible for leading the Qualcomm Product Security Initiative (QPSI), and was one of the founding members of QPSI in 2006. Alex's technical expertise spans a wide domain of computer security, including silicon-level hardware security, web application and protocol security. In his current role, he oversees product security support across all business units and market segments, including Mobile Computing, Networking, Automotive, Healthcare, Smart Home, Wearables, and Internet of Things.
Leilani Gilpin
Position: PhD Student
City of Residence: Cambridge, MA (Boston area)
Education: MS Computational Mathematics, Stanford University 2013; BS Computer Science, BS Mathematics UC San Diego 2011Leilani is currently a PhD student at MIT in the Decentralized Information Group, working on algorithms for cybersecurity and de-identification of data. Before returning to academia, she was a research engineer at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where she worked on network analysis and anomaly detection in healthcare. After graduating with her BS in computer science and mathematics, Leilani continued onto Stanford University and received a MS in Computational Mathematics. While at Stanford, she worked in the Computational Geometry group developing mapping algorithms for 3D brain models. Outside of school, she enjoys swimming, traveling, hiking, playing piano, and Polynesian dance.
Garo Bournoutian
Position: Senior Software Engineer, YouTube Core Infrastructure, Google
City of Residence: Bay Area
Education: PhD Computer Engineering, UC San Diego 2014; MS Computer Engineering, UC San Diego 2007; BS Computer Engineering, UC San Diego 2005; BS Cognitive Neuroscience, UC San Diego 2005Garo Bournoutian received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from UC San Diego in 2005, and continued at UCSD in the PhD program where he specialized in computer architecture and mobile smartphone processor design. During his time at UCSD, Garo worked at Scripps Institute of Oceanography developing embedded underwater robotics software, and at Qualcomm architecting custom processor models. After graduating, he continued working at Qualcomm and additionally was a lecturer in the UCSD CSE department, teaching the compilers course. After working over 9 years at Qualcomm in a mainly hardware domain, he decided to shift gears and move to the Bay Area to work as a software engineer at YouTube in the core infrastructure team. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, coding, reading, and recreational flying.
Taurin Tan-atichat
Position: Software Engineer, Google
City of Residence: New York, NY
Education: MS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2008; BS Computer Engineering, UC San Diego 2006Taurin Tan-atichat joined Google as a software engineer in 2008 at their Mountain View, CA headquarters. After 3 years of working on their Platforms team, which designs Google’s energy efficient data centers, he transitioned to New York for a role in Site Reliability Engineering. His responsibilities now include scaling highly consistent distributed systems that are the skeleton of the vast majority of Google's services. While an undergraduate at UCSD, Taurin was involved with Teams in Engineering Service (TIES) from its inaugural Fall 2004 quarter. He worked on a team that produced a custom-made digital log system for use at a senior home center, complete with wireless touchscreen devices mounted on nursing carts. As a graduate student, Taurin’s research focused on improving the usability and performance of thin-client computing over wide-area networks. He also enjoyed the teaching aspect of academia, serving as a CSE undergraduate tutor for several quarters and as a TA for upper-division courses.
Chris Schulte
Position: Senior Tech Advisor, Kapor Center for Social Impact
City of Residence: San diego, CA
Education: MS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2005Jennifer Argüello
Position: Senior Tech Advisor, Kapor Center for Social Impact
City of Residence: Oakland, CA
Education: BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2000Jennifer Argüello, a Silicon Valley native and dual citizen of Costa Rica and the United States, is a speaker and thought leader on women in technology and Latinos in STEM. She has over a decade of experience in technology companies creating products from mobile apps to the first Xbox Kinect device. Jennifer is not only active on the alumni advisory board but also in Latinas in Computing, an affinity group for the Anita Borg Institute; and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. Jennifer has won much industry recognition, recently being named a 2013 Silicon Valley Latino 40 under 40 Latinos2Watch in Science and Technology, 2011 Femmeonomics Top 50 Women to Watch in Tech; and 2010 National Association of Professional Women: Professional Woman of the Year. Currently she is the resident geek at the Kapor Center for Social Impact, The Kapor Center is relentlessly pursuing creative strategies to leverage tech for positive, progressive change, especially for underrepresented communities, focusing on gap-closing endeavors. She is also a computer science instructor in the summer for the Level Playing Field Institute's SMASH Academy at Stanford University. In her free time you can find Jennifer out in nature or on a sports field. Follow Jennifer at @engijen on Twitter.
Eric Tune
Position: Staff Software Engineer, Google
City of Residence: Saratoga, CA
Education: PhD Computer Science, UC San Diego 2004, BS Computer Engineering, UC San Diego 1996After receiving his BS from UC San Diego in 1996, Eric worked at NIS in San Diego on machine vision applications. He then returned to UC San Diego in 1998 as an MS student, hoping to pursue a long-time interest in computer architecture. A great experience as a Research Assistant in the Computer Architecture Lab convinced him to stay for a PhD, with a focus on computer architecture. After receiving his PhD in 2004, Eric took a leap of faith and joined Google, with little idea what he would be working on. He is now a Tech Lead on Google's cluster scheduling system, where his interest in computer architecture is put to good use. He lives with his wife in Saratoga, California. He enjoys surfing and woodworking in his spare time.
David Zhang
Position: Software Development Engineer in Test, Microsoft (Windows Azure)
City of Residence: Seattle, WA
Education: BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2008After graduating from UCSD, David accepted a position with Microsoft as a Software Engineer in Test in the Identity and Security Division. After contributing and leading the testing efforts for several projects, he moved to the Cloud Networking Team in Windows Azure to pursue his passions in networking and virtualization. Outside of work, he participates in a competitive skydiving team, enjoys paragliding & skiing, and works on finding the perfect cup of coffee.
Khawja Shams
Position: Software Engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
City of Residence: Pasadena, CA
Graduation Year: BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2006; MS Cornell University; PhD, Robotics, University of Southern CaliforniaKhawaja Shams is a Software Engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he leads the development of server side applications for Mars Science Laboratory’s Activity Planning and Sequencing Subsystem. He serves on the CIO Technology Advisory Board at JPL, and he is also a co-chair of Cloud Computing Working Group at JPL. Khawaja is on the NIST board to define an architecture for cloud computing for the federal government. He is leading numerous cloud computing efforts across NASA. Khawaja is an prolific speaker, and he gives dozens of highly rated and attended talks each year. Khawaja works with multiple NASA centers as well as numerous federal agencies. Prior to joining JPL, Khawaja worked at Nokia Mobile Phones in the Internet Protocol team and Malin Space Science Systems. Khawaja earned a B.S. in Computer Science from UCSD, a Masters from Cornell University, and he is currently pursuing a PhD in robotics at University of Southern California under Dr. Maja Mataric. Khawaja’s research interests include robotics, distributed systems, cyber security, and immersive visualization.
Tiffany Liu
Position: Engineer SPAWAR
City of Residence: San Diego, CA
Education: BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2007After graduating from UCSD, Tiffany joined the SPAWAR System Center New Professionals program, a two year professional development program for scientist and engineers, in San Diego. During the program, she toured with a user design group and a data strategy group, taking a permanent assignment as a SOA software engineer with the data strategy group. She is also the New Professionals Steering Committee member, New Professionals Web Chairperson and a SPAWAR recruiter. Outside of work, she is working on running a full marathon, having already finished two half marathons. She also does yoga, bhangra and ceramics. She loves trying new activities with an open mind and heart!
Nilofer Motiwala
Position: Software Engineer, Google (Video/YouTube)
City of Residence: San Francisco
Education: MS Computer Science, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison 2002; BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 2000Nilofer joined UCSD's Eleanor Roosevelt College as an International student in the major in Third World Studies. After taking CSE 9A,B & 12, she decided to switch her major to Computer Science. She went on to get her Masters at University of Wisconsin, Madison and enjoyed research in Kernel optimizations and Database Systems. She has held positions with Siebel, Qualcomm and is currently at Google. In her current project with the Video team, she is leading the frontend team; driving decisions in technology, design and implementation.
Nilofer lives in San Francisco and in her spare time enjoys writing restaurant reviews (after she is done with reading email :)
Michele Strout
Position: Assistant Professor, Colorado State University
City of Residence: Boulder, CO
Education: PhD Computer Science UC San Diego 2003; MS Computer Science UC San Diego 1999; BS Computer Science UC San Diego 1997Michelle has been an assistant professor in the computer science department at Colorado State University since August 2005. From August 2003 through June 2003, she was an Enrico Fermi Postdoctoral Scholar at Argonne National Laboratory and a Research Associate at the University of Chicago. Her main research area is high performance computing and her research interests include compilers and run-time systems, scientific computing, and software engineering.
In 2008, Michelle received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for her research in parallelization techniques for irregular applications, such as molecular dynamics simulations. In 2010, she received a DOE Early Career award to fund her research in separating the specification of scientific computing applications from the specification of implementation details such as how to parallelize such computations. Michelle lives with her husband and two boys ages 5 and 9 in beautiful Fort Collins, Colorado. She enjoys her main "hobbies" who are two boys ages 5 and 9. =)
Haytham Allos
Position: Software Architect, Independent Consultant
City of Residence: San Diego
Education: MS Rady School, UC San Diego 2006; BS Computer Science, UC San Diego 1996Haytham is a visionary and experienced executive with deep knowledge in the enterprise software application development and architecture. He has over 15 years of business and technology experience. He is highly regarded as a key resource, critical thinker and out-of-the-box problem solver by senior executive customers. Haytham has successfully partnered with many global customers such as Pfizer Inc., Sony, Hewlett-Packard Company, General Motors Corporation and various government agencies. Working closely with customers, he led many strategic transformations of technology and business management while keeping a financial management mindset. Haytham is known for his ability to create and articulate corporate vision while working closely with cross-functional teams to embrace it.
Deborah Vieira
Position: Software Consultant
City of Residence: Bay Area
Education: BS Computer Science, UC San DiegoDeborah consults with companies in technology strategy, both for consumer products and enterprise solutions. After working as a software engineer for a few years, she transitioned into a consulting role for consumer and enterprise product companies in Australia and the Philippines, in both product development and operations roles. After returning to the US, she consulted domestically with F500 companies on product design and user experience, liaising between business and technology groups. Most recently, she built and managed the technology team for frog design in San Francisco, and consulted with clients on technology decisions.
Matt Shea
Matt Shea has been with WildTangent since April 2002 and is responsible for the company’s technology and product development. Shea is the co-creator of WildTangent’s WildCoins digital currency and the WildTangent ORB game console. Prior to WildTangent, he was the games group engineering manager at InfoSpace, Inc., leading development across various platforms and devices. Prior to InfoSpace, Shea held the position of engineering director for games at Go2Net, Inc., overseeing large-scale online game sites including PlaySite, Lycos Games, and Hasbro’s Games.com. He got his start in the games industry at Sony Interactive Studios, working on 3D graphics and massively multiplayer games while earning a BS degree in computer science from the University of California at San Diego.