Curriculum Vitae

I can be contacted at the following email address: aedil@alchar.org

Contents:

• Professional Experience
• Education
• Publications
• Research
• Computer Science Experience
• Honours and Activities
• Skills

Professional experience

• Associate Academic Member of Staff (May 2007 - present)
  Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (ESAT - DocArch)
  Areas of work: Voluntary member of academic staff with specialization in accessibility for the blind and visually impaired.
• Principal Developer (Aug 2006 - present)
  Oracle Corporation, Redwood Shores, CA
  Areas of work: Development and support for the Unbreakable Linux project, with main focus on development tools (compilers, libraries, debuggers, \ldots) and special projects. Created an automated build-and-test system for open source projects.
• Senior Software Development Engineer (Jul 2005 - Jul 2006)
  Amazon.com, Seattle, WA
  Areas of work: Engineer on the AWS Mechanical Turk project, software design and implementation, scaling, performance enhancements for very large scale OLTP-style systems, database design and review, training and guidance.
• Principal Engineer (May 2001 - Jun 2005)
  Sine Nomine Associates, Ashburn, VA
  Areas of work: Research and development with Linux on S/390 and zSeries mainframes, management of support, research and development on AFS (Andrew File System) for government research labs and large corporate entities, with significant personal contributions to the OpenAFS community.
• Enterprise Development Division Manager (Jun 2000 - Apr 2001)
  The Sycamore Group, Fort Washington, PA
  Areas of work: Technical management of 20+ developers, implementation of a Java coding standard and development methodology, research on emerging technologies, architecture design and technical leadership, feasibility analysis for new projects, research and development of the Distributed Cache Object system.
• Senior Consultant (Oct 1999 - Jun 2000)
  The Sycamore Group, Fort Washington, PA
  Areas of work: Intensive Java development, design of a multi-developer environment for Netscape Application Server, design and development of a proprietary reusable database search engine.
• Senior Research Engineer (Oct 1998 - Sep 1999)
  FNX Limited, Wayne, PA
  Areas of work: Java development, software security research, Sybase replication technology research, and object-oriented software design.
• Global Distributed Systems Manager (Mar 1996 - Oct 1998)
  FNX Limited, New York, NY
  Areas of work: Worldwide coordination and management of distributed systems with Sybase replication, design and advisory design for replication, distributed installation procedure design and implementation.
• Senior Systems Analyst (Aug 1995 - Mar 1996)
  FNX Limited, New York, NY
  Areas of work: Technical consultant to a major international bank in Tokyo, Japan, and Sybase replication system design. SunOS/Solaris support, network management, and Sybase administration.

Education

• Doctorate in Applied Sciences (In progress)
  Subject: Alternative representations of graphical user interfaces in Unix systems.
• Master of Science in Computer Science (Jul 1995)
  Thesis subject: Design and implementation of an object-oriented programming environment.
  Design and implementation of a prototype programming environment for experiments with object oriented programming. The language LPC is used, and as example of the power of the language and its design, the greater part of the programming environment itself is written in LPC.
• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (Sep 1993)
• Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Sep 1992)
• Admission examination for Civil Engineering (Jul 1988)

Publications

• Van Hees, K., Engelen, J. (2006). "Non-visual access to GUIs: Leveraging abstract user interfaces." ICCHP 2006 (Linz, July 12-14, 2006). (To be published.)
• Van Hees, K. (2005). "Unix screen-readers." Infovisie Magazine, 19(4):17-19, December 2005.
• Van Hees, K., Engelen, J. (2005). "Abstracting the Graphical User Interface for Non-Visual Access." In Alain Pruski and Harry Knops, editors, Assistive technology from virtuality to reality, 8th European conference for the Advancement of Assistive Technology in Europe, pages 239-245. IOS Press. ISBN 1-58603-543-6.
• Van Hees, K., Engelen, J. (2005). "Abstract UIs as a long-term solution for non-visual access to GUIs." In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction.
• Van Hees, K. (1993). "VM NTTP: A TCP/IP Server Application For News." In Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 25 (Suppl 2), pp. S82-S86.

Research

• Development and implementation of a ray-tracer for the visualisation of interference colouring on thin transparent surfaces.
• Object-oriented redesign and implementation of an emulation layer for two Internet adventure games, each serving hundreds of users.
• Research and development of a two-way near real-time replication system for worldwide financial trading.
• Research and development of a distributed cache system to provide lightweight object caching in Java.
• Yacc to LaTeX grammar pretty printer.
• Implementation of the Myson MTP008 hardware monitoring chip driver for Linux.
• Design and implementation of an object-oriented programming language to reduce implementation and maintenance time for non-stop systems.

Computer Science Experience

• Programming in various languages: C/C++, Java, LPC, Ada, ...
• Very proficient with Linux kernel internals.
• Very proficient with AFS (Andrew File System) internals.
• Very proficient with SQL in Sybase, Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL.
• Very proficient with LaTeX and HTML.
• 17 years of experience on IBM mainframe systems with VM and AIX.
• 15 years of experience on Unix platforms: SunOS/Solaris, HP-UX, Linux.

Honours and activities

• Member of the Association for Computing Machinery:
  • Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing (SIGACCESS)
  • Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI)
• Member of the Accessibility Workgroup of the Free Software Group.
• Administrator and lead programmer of VikingMUD for 5 years, administrator and lead programmer of IgorMUD for 4 years.
• Chief editor of Mic-Journaal, a monthly paper of St.Michielscollege, Brasschaat, Belgium for 2 years.
• Awarded the "Estival Prize" of St.Michielscollege, for exceptional organisational talent and initiative.
• Awarded the "First Prize in Literature" of the St.Michielscollege Education Board.

Skills

• Well organised with close attention to detail
• Good verbal and writing skills
• Fluent in Flemish/Dutch and English, fair in French.

Last modified: May 29th, 2007
©1995-2007 by Aedil