David Walend

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Education

Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts
Master of Science in Computer Science, May 2004
Project: A Technique Combining Reinforcement Learning and Genetic Programming for Competitive Games

Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Bachelor of Science in Engineering Physics, May 1993

Experience

• Eleven years experience creating distributed computing systems.
• Ten years experience creating Java applications, tools and services.
• Five years experience creating Java graphical user interfaces.

Lead Engineer, June 2003 - Present
Alphatech Inc, Burlington, Massachusetts

• Creating human-independent and human-interactive planning systems for teams of military vehicles within DARPA research projects.
• Using XMI, XMLSchema, XSLT, JaxB and JMS to manage a changing problem model within a real-time air operations center.
• Designing and developing new algorithms for routing and coordinating teams of aircraft in Java.
• Combining algorithms in procedural (Java) and declarative (Prolog) languages using a reliable XSD-based socket protocol.
• Designing and iteratively implementing expert-in-the-loop planning systems and interactive tactical displays.
• Developing automated 2D analyses of the battle space to efficiently choose tactics.
• Developing electronic warfare tactic heuristics for penetrating attack.
• Using Jython, WSDL, WSIF, XMLSchema and JaxB to define a robust service architecture for planning systems and simple algorithms.
• Leading a team of three programmers, mentoring eight programmers.
• Teaching seminars on Java, XML, using ant and cruise control, software engineering practices and data visualization.
• Directing series of classes to introduce Alphatech to JDK 5.
• Participated in design meetings with DARPA representatives and demonstrations at an air operations center.
• Proposed and won an SBIR contract for littoral warfare decision aides.

Principal Engineer, May 2002 - May 2003
Wildfire Communications, Waltham, Massachusetts

• Invented Java ClassLoader and Oracle database tools to change complex functionality inside JBoss and Weblogic application servers and Oracle databases without interrupting active phone calls.
• Used SAX parsers to implement two specialized languages for telephony user interfaces in Java.
• Simplified a haphazard collection of Ant build.xml files so that all developers can maintain them. Taught seminar on using Ant and automated testing.
• Automated hourly testing of the Nextfire code base using JUnit and Ant.

Independent Contractor, February 2001 - April 2002
Providence, Rhode Island

BD-X LLC, Lexington, Massachusetts

• Worked with domain experts to create database and XML schemata and work-flows for mining voice data.
• Designed robust, changeable MySQL database schema, and Java, php and perl APIs to insulate services from changes in the database schema using Lyophilizer JDO.
• Created a suite of tools to insure cross-table integrity in MySQL.
• Implemented MySQL mirroring and backup.
• Provided Java website and email utilities to alert subscribers about upcoming events.
• Led distributed team to maintain automated builds, tests, and installation updates using CVS, Ant and JUnit.
• Modified and extended jEdit to quickly create a robust application for editing specialized XML documents.

TogetherSoft, Cary, North Carolina

• Suggested improvements to TogetherJ Control Center's user interface, features, installation and handling of large projects.
• Tested and recommended changes in TogetherJ Control Center's API for generating classes.

Lead Engineer, January 1999 - January 2001
Time0 LLC, Cambridge, Massachusetts

• Provided technical leadership for a team of eleven people.
• Developed J2EE-based registration using Struts, JSPs, Servlets, EJBs and messaging on JBoss, Weblogic, HSQLDB and Oracle.
• Created distributed logging subsystem in Java.
• Created distributed object identification system for EJBs and Oracle.
• Introduced Ant and directed efforts to use JUnit to automate testing.
• Created Swing demos for the sales team.
• Represented Time0 at NetMarketMakers trade show and on sales calls.
• Mentored four junior employees.

Software Engineer, April 1997 - January 1999
VNP Software Inc, Cambridge, Massachusetts

• Created a Java on CORBA distributed persistence framework for Visigenic and JBuilder.
• Built a Swing user interface for object-relational mapping.
• Added a modular code generation layer to an object-relational mapping tool for Visigenic and JBuilder.
• Conjoined and corrected two radically different equity derivative valuation code bases in Objective C from two large Swiss banks.

Senior Software Engineer, August 1996 - April 1997
BareBones Software Inc, Bedford, Massachusetts

• Redesigned BBEdit's HTML markup tools to add user-defined extensions.
• Demonstrated BBEdit at two MacWorlds.

Staff Engineer, June 1993 - August 1996
TASC Inc, Reading, Massachusetts

• Worked with meteorologists to build a global cloud cover modeling system that generated the missing 84% hourly cloud cover data from the existing data. Implemented fractal models which extended satellite data to 1.5 nautical mile scales. Optimized the fractal modeling algorithm to reduce compute time by four orders of magnitude.
• Used Nextstep distributed objects to create a distributed compute engine for cloud cover modeling.
• Created tool to generate flow-of-control visualization, a precursor of UML sequence diagrams, for Objective C legacy code.
• Created spectacular visualizations of predicted cloud cover and more abstract meteorology data using Nextstep.
• Produced a study of feasibility of conventional warheads for Trident II D5 missiles for the Navy's Special Projects branch. Ran simulations and determined design goals for various options using EVA and BEL-CAD - OpenGL based tools, MatLab, and custom tools in C.
• Applied Bayesian techniques to predict which Trident II future flight test program would be able to detect decays in accuracy using MatLab.
• Analyzed flight test results to determine the most likely causes of misses. Discovered that previous analyses were biased to hide errors in flight tests with many reentry bodies.
• Presented reports to Navy staff every three months. Designed visualizations of abstract statistic data in Postscript to demonstrate specific findings for the Navy.

Open Source and Academic Projects

• Web logger at java.net. Helping with efforts to switch from CVS to Subversion.
• JCP member and informal adviser for JSR-222 (JaxB 2.0) and JSR-166 (java.util.concurrent) development.
• Created JDigraph, a library for representing and working with directed graphs and Semiring-based algorithms.
• Invented a technique to combine genetic programming and reinforcement learning to play an armor strategy game.
• Created Somnifugi JMS, a fast, single-JVM implementation of the Java Messaging Service API.
• Created JEnum, a tool to generate enumerated types as suggested in Josh Bloch's Effective Java.
• Created Cricket Cage, a tool that uses AspectJ to automatically generates JUnit tests from running Java code.
• Invented Lyophilizer framework to provide safe inheritance for EJB entity beans and a simple API for persisting objects, a precursor for JDO.
• Used Bayesian statistics and Occam's razor ratio to select the best neural network design using MatLab.
• Created spoken language interface for Clue in Java.
• Demonstrated fuzzy rule constraint programming for directed graph drawing in Java.
• Created Java applet demonstrating semiring graph algorithms.
• Corrected examples in the Ant manual.

Contact Information

88 Ripley St
Newton, MA 02459
david@walend.net
http://www.walend.net

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