I was born about an hour's drive from Toronto, and have lived in Toronto all my life. During primary and secondary school, my extra-cirricular activities included chess, and drama. I played Timmy in Timmy and the Pitiful Pink Plastic Ball in Grade 7, and in one of my crowning achievements of pre-pubescent fame, I played the Tin Man in our school production of The Wizard of Oz. I am still amazed that I memorized 75 pages of script for that play. I can't remember a word of it today.
I graduated from York Memorial Collegiate Institute, and attended the first 3 years of the Astronomy and Physics Specialist program at the University of Toronto, before realizing that I was spending more time in front of my computer at home than doing problem sets; so I transferred to Computer Science, and finished my undergraduate degree there.
I worked at the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto until it closed its doors in 1995, due to budget cuts. I programmed an automated question-and-answer system in about 1986 that was used until the Planetarium closed, and I lectured and ran public shows. I am very interested in teaching astronomy to the public, and especially to children.
My work experience includes 1.5 years at IBM in Toronto, first in the OS/2 support group, and then in the optimizing compiler group, TOBEY. I also spent 8 months at Algorithmics helping develop their flagship product RiskWatch(tm) in the systems programming group, and in the financial instrument modelling group. Finally, I spent a year at Altera Corp, writing FPGA fitting software and aiding in the development of their latest and greatest chip.
Meanwhile, back in academia, I finally graduated with a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Astrophysics, and then an M.Sc. in Computer Science. I looked at the reliability of gravitational N-body integrations that astrophysicists like to perform when simulating galaxies, star clusters, and even our Solar System. I started my Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1995, and defended it in January 2001.
In my spare time, I do outdoor activities like hiking, canoeing, kayaking, stargazing, and biking. I enjoy listening to music (mostly classical, although I've been known to listen to some 60's and early 70's music), reading (philosophy and environmental issues in non-fiction, as well as science-fiction) and am at this time attempting to teach myself to play the piano. I have composed a few simple musical pieces which, if you get to know me really well, I may be persuaded to play for you. I also write the occasional poem, although I need some serious inspiration for that.
I am currently an Assistant Professor at the School of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine.