Alumni News
M.S. and Ph.D. Alumni
Francis Roncagli (M.S. 1983) left the software industry to switch careers after over 30 years working for companies like Digital Equipment Corporation, Rockwell Automation and Hyland Software. He completed the requirements of the Doctor of Business Administration degree at Cleveland State University in December 2012. Since August 2011 he has held the position of College Lecturer in the Department of Finance in the Monte Ahuja College of Business at Cleveland State, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in Corporate and International Finance. (Blaise.Roncagli@hyland.com)
Thom Haynes (M.S. 1989) started working at Fujifilm Medical Systems USA in June (in RTP, NC) as the User Experience Lead. He owns Usability Guidelines for the division, and the UI Specification for the next version of Synapse, a software PACS radiology solution for workflow, image manipulation and analysis for common modalities such as CT, MR, MG (mammography), etc. (thomhaynes1@gmail.com)
Debu Chatterjee (M.S 1990) is now Founder and CEO of a Data Analytics startup DxContinuum. The company is actively recruiting additional beta customers. (debu.chatterjee@gmail.com)
Ross Whitaker (M.S. 1991, Ph.D. 1994) was appointed Director of the School of Computing at the University of Utah as of January 1, 2014. (whitaker@cs.utah.edu)
Ronald Azuma (Ph.D. 1995) was invited by the National Academy of Engineering to give a Gilbreth Lecture, covering Augmented Reality. The Gilbreth Lectures are named in honor of Lillian Gilbreth, the first woman elected to the NAE. See a photo here. (ronald.azuma@gmail.com)
Dan Palmer (Ph.D. 1995), professor of Computer Science at John Carroll University (JCU) is on a research sabbatical for the Spring 2013 semester at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. He and Dr. David Piraino, MD are investigating collaborative diagnosis of digital medical images using algorithmic and social consensus techniques. They are using software developed by JCU undergraduates in a semester-long Software Engineering course. (dpalmer@jcu.edu)
Theodore Kim (Ph.D. 2006) and Lawrence Kesteloot (M.S. 1995) were both part of teams that were recognized in February in Beverly Hills, for their innovative computer science work in the film industry. More information is available on this page.
Paul Yushkevich (Ph. D. 2003) received tenure at the Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania. (pauly2@mail.med.upenn.edu)
Doug Hoffman (Ph. D. 1996) has announced his latest book, his first work of science fiction, titled Parker’s Folly. The book is available as a paperback and eBook from Amazon.com. Hoffman is living in Conway, Arkansas, working at Acxiom Corporation and teaching at Hendrix College on occasion. (hoffman@dlhoffman.com)
Vicki Interrante (Ph. D. 1996) is serving as the general co-chair for IEEE Virtual Reality 2014 (along with her colleague from UMN Dan Keefe). It will be the third time in three years that a UNC alum has served in the co-chair role for this conference. Last year the conference was chaired by Ben Lok and Greg Welch and the year before it was chaired by Aditi Majumder. (interran@cs.umn.edu)
Greg Coombe (Ph. D. 2007) left Google after six years and joined Matterport. Matterport does 3D scanning of interior spaces for real estate. The company recently closed a funding round of $5.6 million dollars to create immersive experiences with interior spaces, starting within homes. (greg.coombe@gmail.com)
Marc Macenko (M.S. 2009) graduated from UNC Law School in Spring 2013, passed the NC bar, and started working at a local patent boutique law firm, Withrow & Terranova. (macenko@gmail.com)
Stephen Olivier (Ph.D. 2012) won the Best Student Paper Award at the Supercomputing Conference, the top conference in high performance computing with over 10,000 attendees. Stephen presented the paper “Characterizing and Mitigating Work-Time Inflation in Task Parallel Programs,” a part of his dissertation research. Stephen is now a senior member of the technical staff at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. (olivier at cs.unc.edu)
Undergraduate Alumni
After 12 years of living in The Netherlands, Sam Brodkin (B.S. 1997) has returned to Silicon Valley for a job at Apple, Inc. as an iOS Engineer. (sam@brodkin.com)
Ian Yuan (B.S. 2001) moved to Seattle to complete a pediatric anesthesiology fellowship in 2013. (iyuan02@gmail.com)
Aaron Fulkerson (B.S. 2004), CEO of Mindtouch, announced the launch of the HTC Global Product Help Experience in April. Mindtouch powers the support website, the in call center, in support ticketing and in product (on handset) product knowledge. (aaronf@mindtouch.com)
Ryan Niedzialek (B.S. 2005) is now a manager in the Strategic Analytics group at Electronic Arts. (ryan.niedzialek@gmail.com)
Jaime Vega (B.S. 2005) is now a Software Development Manager at Jazz Wireless Data. (jxvega@gmail.com)
Michael Stewart (B.S. 2007) earned an M.S. degree in May 2013 (as well as an Engineering Education graduate certificate and Future Professoriate graduate certificate). He is continuing in VT’s Ph.D. program in Human-Computer Interaction and expects to graduate in May of 2016. (tgm@vt.edu)
Friends of the Department
Liyun Yu, postdoctoral fellow with Steve Pizer in 1994-1996, was elected chair for IEEE EMBS ENC Chapter and as a board member and Conference Director for ISSA Raleigh Chapter. Yun has also recently won several photography awards including: PPNC 2nd Place in Commercial Group 2012, PPA International Competition Award 2012, Black White Spider Award Nominee 2012 and Light Space and Time All Photograph Special Recognition, 2012.
Comp Sci Gmail Accounts Available for Alumni
The Computer Science department provides alumnus accounts, including accounts in the department’s Google Apps domain, to graduates of this department who either received a Masters or PhD degree from this department, or received a Bachelor’s degree from this department and have worked for the department for at least two semesters.
Having an alumnus account allows you to log in and see how things are going on our systems and to maintain a small web page, perhaps with pointers to another site. These accounts are limited to 400 MB of home directory space. The accounts do not include cvs, playpen, or ftp space. Optionally, they can include an account on the department’s Google Apps domain, including an email account. These include a 25 GB email quota and the ability to control your email forwarding.
Graduate alumni from previous years who are interested in setting up an alumnus account or adding Google to their existing alumnus account should send email to help at cs.unc.edu. Graduate alumni from the current year will simply keep their Google mail account, with no changes.
Undergraduate alumni from previous years who are interested in setting up an alumnus account or adding a department Google account, including Google mail, to their existing alumnus account, should send email to help at cs.unc.edu. Undergraduate alumni from the current year who wish to have Google mail enabled for their account should send email to help at cs.unc.edu.