Short Bio

It all began one summer day, over a quarter century ago, in Valencia, CA. After a while, the family moved to Thousand Oaks, CA, where I've lived ever since. It was a fairly uneventful childhood, though I was named an all-star from my flag football team in the sixth grade. I spent a lot of time playing outside with my friends. We played lots of football, baseball, basketball, roller hockey, and other assorted games, had water fights, and just all around had an awful lot of fun. I can't complain. Nothing too exciting in high school. I did learn that I am very good at taking AP tests: eight tests, seven 5s and a 4 (why English literature, why???). I also learned, through two seasons as a sprinter on the track team, that I'm not fast enough to be a sprinter.

After graduating from Westlake High School in 1997, it was off to California Lutheran University, the greatest place that anyone could possibly spend four years of his life as an undergraduate student. Good times. At CLU, I double majored in mathematics and computer science and minored in physics. That means that I spent a lot of time in the D-Building, especially in the majors room and, in my final year after the majors room became a computer lab, the D-Hole. My favorite math class? Number theory. My favorite computer science class? It's a tough call, but I'd have to go with the capstone class in which I made a pattern recognition program that could recognize the numbers 2, 3, 4, and 6 (and really, what more do you need?). You can even read my final report if you have nothing better to do with 26 pages worth of your time. You won't get any of the figures or code, though, since that was the first document I ever wrote in LaTeX and I was too pressed for time to figure out how to actually get them into the paper with the text. You can also visit the web page for my mathematics capstone in which I develop a mathematical model to determine that the 4-6 split in bowling is more difficult than the 6-7-10. That's right, I had two capstone projects. And the presentations for them were on the same day: the day after I wrote most of the aforementioned 26-page final report. Like I said, good times. Some other highlights from my days at CLU: After graduating summa cum laude from Cal Lutheran in 2001, my thirst for knowledge still unquenched, I headed to the University of Southern California, home of the back-to-back National Champions in football! And yes, that does mean a lot to me; I go to all the games and it's nice to see wins. I received my master's degree in Computer Science in December 2003. I got my Ph.D., also in computer science in December 2006. This means that I met my main goal of having the Ph.D. by the time of my ten year high school reunion. Any longer than that would have been disappointing. Anyway, my research with Prof. Viktor K. Prasanna. We're studying reconfigurable computing and its use in scientific applications. I've had the privilege of going to some conferences and some other project meetings. Those are always nice, though it is much more nerve-racking when one actually has to present something. Now, all I've got to do is find a job. Are you hiring?

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