About

Currently, I am Chief Technology Strategist at Emory University's Libraries, which comprises more than a dozen research facilities at the Atlanta campus. I joined Emory in August 2008, and was also appointed adjunct faculty in the Math & CS department. Details on courses I'm currently teaching and related information can be found there on myCS-department website. In 2008, I received a PhD in computer science at Old Dominion University, where I had been a Graduate Research Assistant and adjunct faculty since 2004. My advisor, Dr. Michael Nelson, has been awarded numerous grants, including an NSF Career Award. During my time at ODU, I was also the main system administrator for several of our research computers (mostly Red-Hat/Fedora Core and Debian boxes), and webmaster for the modoai.org site, among many others. Thanks to support from my advisor and other professors, I was named the eighth recipient of the CLIR Zipf Fellowship, and in January 2006 attended the first Google Workshop for Women Engineers. My dissertation research focused on web architecture, particularly the accessibility of digital content and the preservation of web resources. I passed the Candidacy exam in 2006, and successfully defended my dissertation on 12 June 2008: "Integrating Preservation Functions into the Web Server." The department was kind enough to name me outstanding research assistant in May, 2008.

Prior to that, I spent over 15 years working at various roles in software engineering and management. I also taught a variety of computer classes at a small private tech school, and for a time designed and developed computer-based training modules for adult education centers.

I have lived, worked and studied in many countries around the world, including Belgium, Panama, Korea, and in many states in the good old USA. My educational background includes degrees in philosophy (U of Leuven, Belgium); chemistry, natural science (SUNY), and Computer Education (Hampton U).

As a software professional, my experience lies primarily in the design and development of information systems. I was a key developer of an Apache 2 module, MODOAI which was released as open source in 2008. In addition, in the early days of computer-based training, I wrote software for Army Education Center courses on Control Data Corporation mainframes which had one of the first touch-screen interfaces for end-users. My enthusiasm for computing in general, and networking in particular, led me to install a sophisticated smart home system in my own previous residence, with a master scheduler (to control lights, for example) and 64 wired cat-5 ports. The protocol is showing its age, though and I had just decided to transition to the newer Insteon system when I took the position in Atlanta. So far, I've been kept too busy to install more than a few modules in the new house. It's a lot harder to re-wire an existing house than to build it in from scratch.