education

Master of Business Administration (MBA)
(2005)
Wilkes-Barre, PA

The Wilkes MBA program is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP). The Jay S. Sidhu School of Business and Leadership is also a member of the Association of Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

awards:

  • Delta Mu Delta, National Honor Society
B.S. Computer Science
(2003)
Wilkes-Barre, PA

The Wilkes University Computer Science curriculum consists of theoretical as well as application-oriented courses and is based on a strong foundation in mathematics.

experience

Sr. Scala Software Engineer
(Dec 2017 - Present)
New York, NY

Disney Streaming Services is responsible for developing and operating The Walt Disney Company’s direct-to-consumer video businesses globally, including the ESPN+ premium sports streaming service; the upcoming Disney subscription video service; and BAMTECH Media, a global leader in direct-to-consumer video streaming products and solutions.

responsibilities:

  • Developed and maintained scalable microservices.
  • Created new microservices in Scala with Akka and Play.
  • Helped with cost optimization initiatives to cloud infrastructure. Saved over $1mm/yr for team.
  • Contributed to on-call rotation.

technologies used:

  • Scala: Play 2.6
  • Javascript: React/Redux
  • Python: Flask, Boto3
  • Data: DynamoDB, Redis, ElasticSearch
  • AWS: EC2, ECS, Lambda, S3, DynamoDB, ElastiCache,Redshift, Kinesis, CloudWatch, SQS, SNS
Principal Software Engineer
Snowbird Labs
(Feb 2015 - Dec 2017)
New York, NY

Snowbird Labs designs and creates Cellular-First remote computer vision systems.

responsibilities:

  • Developed a cloud backend for data collection, processing, and presentation of information from a new cellular (LTE) IoT device.
  • Developed firmware components and embedded systems for the IoT device.
  • Created specification, selection, and sourcing of device bill of materials (BOM).
  • Contributed to digital fabrications (SLA, CNC) of prototype housings.

technologies used:

  • Go: Caddy Server, Gorilla Tool Kit
  • Javascript: React/Redux, D3
  • Python: Django Rest Framework (DRF)
  • iOS: Swift
  • Data: MySQL, DynamoDB
  • AWS: EC2, EB, Lambda, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, CloudWatch, Cognito, SQS, SNS, IoT
  • CAD: SolidWorks, Fusion360
  • Digital Fabrication: Form 2 (SLS), Shapeoko 3 (CNC)
Chief Technology Officer
BrainRush
(Sep 2012 - Feb 2015)
Santa Monica, CA

BrainRush was a VC-funded education technology startup founded by Nolan Bushnell (of Atari fame). It was a collection of online educational games that utilized machine learning techniques to optimize pace and difficulty for indidvidual students. It grew to thousands of daily users and was utilized by many school districts across the United States.

responsibilities:

  • Helped develop a machine learning system for user individualization in an educational product.
  • Lead the creation of the BrainRush.com platform with a $1.4m budget.
  • Recruited and hired full-time Software Engineers, testers, and interns.
  • Continuously spoke with teachers and students (users) for continuous product improvement.
  • Ran the sattelite engineering office.
  • Created scalable infrastructore to allow platform to handle tens of thousands of daily users.
  • Contributed to strategies and presentations for company fundraising.
  • Published a peer reviewed paper on the effect of our machine learning algorithm that was used for teaching thousands of students.
  • Utilized multizone AWS infrastructure.

technologies used:

  • Python: scikit-learn
  • Javascript: Backbone.js, jQuery
  • PHP: Symfony2, Doctrine2
  • iOS: Objective-C
  • Data: MySQL, Redis, MongoDB
  • Rackspace: Openstack
Principal Software Architect
(Mar 2011 - Sep 2012)
Mountain View, CA

ITNinja.com is a project within the Kace division of Dell. Kace was a startup acquired by Dell to leverage new server products and support. The ITNinja project was the first software team to utilize Agile methodologies within Dell.

responsibilities:

  • Software Architect for the ITNinja.com project.
  • Official Mentor for the 10+ member development team.
  • Oversaw performance requirements of a large, highly available data system
  • Introduced Agile (Scrum) methodologies for a pilot development project that was used as an example for Agile practices throughout the Dell Software Group.
  • Trained team members to use modern software testing practices.

awards:

  • 2011 - New Employee of the Year

technologies used:

  • Atlassian: JIRA
  • Javascript: jQuery
  • PHP: Symfony2, Doctrine2, PHPUnit
  • Data: MySQL, Redis
Founder, Project/Engineering Manager
Mountain Top Software
(Oct 2008 - Mar 2011)
Mountain Top, PA

Mountain Top Software, Inc. was a small web services development shop. It grew to support multiple simultanious clients from many industries. Projects were mostly web and mobile development.

responsibilities:

  • Mytrus: A San Francisco startup funded by Pfizer and Genentech. The project brought clinical trials for pharmaceuticals to the web. Also created first version of the enroll(tm) iPad app (popular in many European hospital systems)
  • Individual Digital: a NYC Start-up centering on shopping tied with social networking
  • ProtectCell: Insurance for mobile phones. Complete rewrite of legacy product.
  • Automotive Computer Services (ACS): Dealership management system. Complete rewrite of legacy product.
Lead Sr. Software Engineer
ePlay
(May 2006 - Oct 2008)
San Francisco, CA

ePlay was a VC funded startup. It started as a way to sports betting in a novel (legal) way online. ePlay later pivoted to "Social Prediction", a way for users to vote on what the outcome of a publicised event would be. A form of online polling. ePlay grew to tens of thousands of users and several million hits per day.

responsibilities:

  • Lead a six member team of software developers and graphical designers to create a website that could scale with rapidly growing usage
  • Measured and predicted project estimation with the Agile approach to software development

awards:

  • 2008 - voted "Best Team Player"
Sr. Software Engineer
(2005 - 2006)
Raleigh, NC

CertCapture was the web portal for a (paper) certificate management system. The system managed Sales and Use certificates for major corporations such as Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard, and others. CertCapture would often be responsable for printing, mailing, and scanning tens of thousands of certificates per month.

responsibilities:

  • Oversaw initial development of core products
  • Developed libraries for handling the merging of template data to PDFs for large volume printing
  • Created system for reading in OCR data from thousands of scanned documents
Jr. Software Engineer
(2003 - 2005)
Wilkes-Barre, PA

Berkshire Hathaway Guard, formally Guard Insurance Group, is a large worker's compensation insurance company with hundreds of employees. It was voted the Best Place to Work in Northeastern Pennsylvania for several years in a row.

responsibilities:

  • Contributed to the rewrite of the automated ACH billing systems. The system handled all major accounts within company with several million dollars per year in net clearing

freelance

(2014 - 2015)
Eugene, OR

LoveEveryDay is a core product for GlobalMed. LoveEveryDay was created as a tool for fostering communication between spouses in distressed marraiges. Initial prototype was paid for by the National Institute of Healt. Once scientifice efficiveness was proven, the system was scaled up for use by the U.S. miliatary. The system was scaled up for use by all 4+ million US service personel. The scale up was paid for by the U.S. Dept. of Defense.

Engineering Advisor
(2008 - 2011)
Langhorne, PA

WordPlay is a rich web application that was used by thousands of secondary education students in the United States to aid English speaking students with learning Spanish vocabulary.

personal

Co-Founder
TrailKam
(2015 - 2018)
Mountain Top, PA

TrailKam, an online photo management tool for photos taken from trail cameras that aggregates weather and other metadata.

achievements:

  • Created and oversaw all aspects of development of TrailKam.com, a platform for managing photos taken from outdoor scouting cameras
  • Processed 100+ million images in first 18 months of operation
  • Secured relationships and hosted projects for The U.S. Dept. of Interior
  • Presented at large industry trade shows.

publication

Quantifying Csikszentmihalyi's Flow for Learning Tasks
(2015)

Educators recognize the need to provide users with context-appropriate challenges. Despite this belief, online learning games typically provide uninformed adaptive selection of learning tasks. Instead, we present our design of a quantified flow-channel metric, a ratio of user skill over problem difficulty. By mining and clustering historical play data from brainrush.com, a crowdsourced online learning platform, we weigh distractors for each learning objective. Our algorithm adaptively constructs questions based on our metric to maintain Flow. Our approach provides in-game adaptation to maintain the user's Flow experience and is applicable to a wide range of learning tasks.

volunteer

All Terrain Volunteer
Nuevo Santa Rosa, Guatemala

The Glens Falls Medical Mission Foundation (GFMMF) is a non-profit organization formed to provide services to a medically under-served area of Guatemala. Our goals include determining the area’s health needs through discussion with the local residents and community leaders. We then work to provide a wide range of medical and other health-related services to meet these needs.

achievements:

  • Member of five foreign missions to Nuevo Santa Rosa, Guatemala
Hazleton, PA

The Civil Air Patrol (CAP) is a congressionally chartered, federally supported non-profit corporation that serves as the official civilian auxiliary of the United States Air Force (USAF). CAP is a volunteer organization with an aviation-minded membership that includes people from all backgrounds, lifestyles, and occupations. It performs three congressionally assigned key missions: emergency services, which includes search and rescue (by air and ground) and disaster relief operations; aerospace education for youth and the general public; and cadet programs for teenage youth. In addition, CAP has recently been tasked with homeland security and courier service missions. CAP also performs non-auxiliary missions for various governmental and private agencies, such as local law enforcement and the American Red Cross. The program is established as an organization by Title 10 of the United States Code and its purposes defined by Title 36.

Mountain Top, PA

Mountain Top Youth Soccer Association (MYSA) provides our area kids and coaches with a full-service recreational youth soccer program, including practices, games, camps, clinics, coaching courses, and referee certification.

Mountain Top, PA

The mission of Mountaintop Area Little League is to instill in the children of the community the ideals of good sportsmanship, honesty, loyalty, and courage.

clubs

Wilkes-Barre, PA

The Wyoming Valley R/C Flyers is an Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) Charter Club (#952). The Club flys at Moon Lake County Park located in Plymouth Township PA, about 10 miles north of Wilkes-Barre. Our grass runway is 80' by 400'. Current membership is 73 members. We are dedicated to promoting the Academy of Model Aeronautics, safe flying, and having fun. Help is available for beginners with dedicated instructors. Spectators and flyers are always welcome to spend some time with us.

Great Meadows, NJ

The Radical Rocketeers is a chartered section (#712) of the National Association of Rocketry (NAR). We host low, mid and high power launches, year round, from our launch site located on Godlewsky Farms in Great Meadows, NJ, just minutes from I-80 Exit 19 in northwestern NJ. Our launches are conducted in accordance with NAR model rocket and high power safety codes. High power launches are authorized within the constraints of our 5000 foot FAA waiver. Our mission is to facilitate and foster interest in all aspects of sport rocketry. We are also a nationally competitive NAR section with several NAR competitions held throughout the contest year.

Hazleton, PA

The Greater Hazleton Area Astronomical Society (GHAAS) was formed in 1977 by a group of amateur astronomers as a non-profit educational organization. The society was incorporated in 1995. Its purpose is to advance the science of astronomy by stimulating interest and encouraging the study therein by educating its members and the public through astronomical observation techniques and the use of astronomical equipment.

Wilkes-Barre, PA

The Scranton Curling Club formed in February 2006 with the purpose of teaching the Olympic sport of curling to the residents of NEPA. Curling is a lifetime sport that can be enjoyed by people ages 5 to 105. In May of 2006, we were accepted into the U.S. Curling Association and Grand National Curling Club as a member club. Though were are called the Scranton Curling Club, we curled at the Ice Box in Pittston. After a season and a half of ultra late start times and slow growth we parted ways with the Ice Box leaving us iceless for three seasons. In the beginning of 2010, we struck a deal to move to the newly-refurbished rink at Coal St. Park in Wilkes-Barre. This is the practice facility of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.