Thomas H. Austin

 

401 Heller Dr, #26

Santa Cruz, CA 95064

(415) 307-5322

tom@bias2build.com

www.bias2build.com

tomthemighty.blogspot.com

 

Education

PhD student, UC Santa Cruz. Expected graduation date – June 2012

• Computer Science major
• Software and Languages Research Group (SLANG)

 

Master’s Degree, San Jose State University. Graduation date – May 2008

• Computer Science major
• Certificate in Computational Linguistics

 

BS, Santa Clara University. Graduation date – June 1998

• Operations and Management of Information Systems major

 

Relevant Experience

July 1998 – July 2008: Senior Software Engineer, McClatchy Interactive (formerly Knight Ridder Digital). This is the online division of the McClatchy Company, the 3^rd largest newspaper publisher in the United States. I have been primarily focused on data feeds, but I have done some web development as well. During this time, I have risen from a junior-level programmer to a senior software engineer.

Some highlights:

• Designed and implemented a new feed processing framework for classified ads. This uses Java, but includes a tool to plug in scripts written in Mozilla’s Rhino implementation of JavaScript.
• Created a Java/XML based metadata extraction tool for classified ads. It both extracts metadata and groups the results by the items for sale within each ad.
• Built Java/XSL based system to export XML and SGML feeds to CareerBuilder, Cars.com, and other vertical partners for classified advertising.
• Built system to process SGML data feeds from 30+ newspapers. Wrote a JavaCC grammar to help validate feeds in this data format.

 

Fall 2004 – May 2008: Master’s CS student at San Jose State University

Some sample projects included:

• RhinoFaces: For my thesis, I have extended Rhino JavaScript to include some new metaobject protocol features. This has been incorporated into a web development framework based on JavaServer Faces. This framework is patterned after Ruby on Rails. http://www.bias2build.com/thesis/.
• Built Hyype.net: Sports micro-blogging website using Helma Object Publisher. http://hyype.net/.
• Built I~Poper, a site for creating videos. Written in PHP. http://www.ipoper.net.
• Created Street6 – A social networking site for poker players. Built with Ruby on Rails. (Now defunct).
• Built GAMSA (Genetic Algorithm for Multiple Sequence Alignment). This used a genetic algorithm to align sequences of nucleotides and amino acids.
• Built information extraction package for print classified ads, including a tool for evaluating the recall and precision of the model. Written in Ruby.
• Created a language model for classified ads using Python scripts and SRI’s Language Modeling Toolkit.
• MD5 cryptographic hash project – Implemented MD5 algorithm in C, implemented the Wang/Yu attack against MD5 in C, and created 2 different postscript files with the same MD5 hash value.
• Built ThaTune$ – A shell to interact with Apple’s iTunes Store. This worked with iTunes v. 5.