Robert John McCall
Curriculum Vitae
Timeline of recent work:
2000
August Enrolled at Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh.
Originally I was going to be a mathematics/physics
double major, but over the course of my freshman
year I discovered theoretical computer science and
simultaneously lost interest in academically pursuing
physics.
October Began research with Jade Goldstein at CMU's Language
Technologies Institute, under Jaime Carbonell.
At this point, I was simply developing an applet
front-end to her text summarizer; by summer we'd
started investigating the use of document-feature
classifiers for identifying document genre (that is,
whether it's a news article, a movie review, etc.).
2001
fall Began the Mathematical Studies sequence, a two-semester
rigorous survey of undergraduate mathematics, including
formal logic, set theory, algebra, and a formal
treatment of integral calculus.
Became the 2nd Vice President of the CMU KGB -- that is,
I became the activities coordinator for a fifty-person
student group with weekly events (despite the name, KGB
is a non-political social organization). I held this
position until the May, 2002.
2002
spring To everyone's surprise, Linear Algebra II became an
undergraduate research course for this one semester.
I was asked to classify all three-dimensional
associative algebras, which I believe is an open
problem. I'm still working on it, off and on.
Helped KGB build a "booth" for CMU's Spring Carnival.
Over the course of a month, I sank well over a
hundred hours into this -- in retrospect, probably
a mistake, given that I simultaneously:
Took Operating Systems, an intensive course in OS
development in which I designed and implemented a
UNIX-like kernel and filesystem. At one point, I
was scheduled to T.A. it the next semester -- but I
ran out of energy during Booth, my grade slipped,
and I was disqualified. Still, one of my favorite
experiences from college.
summer Interned with Intellions.com, a very recent start-up:
I was one of only three employees. We developed
software for analyzing price/demand curves in online
stores by dynamically changing the price.
Interned at iCarnegie, Inc., a CMU-affiliated online
school of technology. A few CMU students were asked
to develop a systems-programming course in conjunction
with CMU Professor David O'Hallaron; I created course
material for the section on operating systems, and I
wrote a lab in which students used the Pentium's cycle
counter to identify context switches.
Finished my work with Jade Goldstein.
fall Worn out and personal crisis. I did attempt to withdraw
from CMU for the semester, but my advisor recommended
against it.
2003
December Graduated from CMU with a B.S. in Mathematics
and a double major in Computer Science
2004
January Began full-time employment as a software
developer at MAYA Viz, a collaborative information-
visualization company. Viz's core product is a
collaborative architecture and UI environment
called CoMotion, on top of which other applications
are written. My primary role has been as a
visualization and interface developer for TransViz,
a CoMotion-based logistical analysis tool for the
U.S. Transportation Command; my duties include
maintaining the TransViz user interface and working
with information and visual designers to develop efficient
visualizations for large data sets (30,000+ items).
April Wrote a general framework for on-the-fly changes to the
mechanics of CoMotion visualizations: for example,
to switch the data attributes visualized on one axis
of a chart
August Became the primary maintainer of MAYA Viz's map
architecture, used extensively by the Command Post of
the Future (CPOF), a software package currently
deployed to active U.S. Army divisions in Iraq
2005
April MAYA Viz sells itself to General Dynamics, a major
American defense contractor
May Developed an architecture for parsing user-authored
XML files with goals of strict validation, error
recovery, and high levels of user feedback. Applied
this architecture to the chart-specification language,
greatly streamlining the process of creating new
visualizations.
August Applied the above XML-parsing architecture to the
application configuration files.
Areas of research experience:
Automated document classification, particularly on applying
feature classifiers to the problem of identifying the "genre"
of a document (news article, opinion piece, review, etc.),
through work with Jade Goldstein and Jaime Carbonell.
Information Architecture (IA), particularly on practical considerations
of schema choice and user-specified schemas, through work with MAYA's
"u-form" architecture.
Information Visualization (InfoVis), particularly on visualization
creation and architectural approaches to information extraction,
through work with Stefan Kerpedjiev.
Areas of practice:
6 years as an application/architecture developer in Java
4 years of side projects in functional languages, particularly SML and OCAML
3 years as a "hard" systems programmer in C
2 years as a professional software developer, including experience in:
- creating and maintaining stable product releases
- requirements analysis and prototype development with visual,
information, and interaction designers
- automated and manual software testing
- configuration management
Obligatory laundry list of other skills:
graphical user interface design, development, and user testing
passably literate in French (e.g., I can translate French technical papers,
and I once wrote proofs in French for an entire semester)
technical interviewer for two years
UNIX (FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris) programming and maintenance
use and configuration of CVS, Perforce, Bugzilla, Apache, Tomcat, etc.