David Whitney

Objective

Summary

Education

• Stanford University, Computer Science, M.S. '89, B.S. '88

Independent Web Work

• Firefox plugin to hide annoying HTML elements (2011)
• Simple XML-driven interactive Perl app to manage local soccer team. (2003)
  • Managed team communication, weekly roster, schedule, and results.
• RingWorld Space Settlement Applet (1999)
• DiningPhilosophers multithreaded applet (1997)
• Graphic Logic Problem Solver Applet (1997)

Professional Experience

Lead technical engineer on various projects across Amazon's businesses, including Supply Chain Optimization Systems, Amazon Marketplace, and Amazon Web Services groups. Worked closely with many teams to improve the customer experience.

• Amazon Web Services 2008 - 2011
  Lead engineer for Amazon AWS Management Console - Rich UI webapp for controlling Amazon's Web Services using client-side javascript, YUI, JQuery. Struts2/Tomcat Java backend to aggregate XML responses from AWS services.
• Amazon Marketplace 2003 - 2008
  Lead engineer for software systems to automatically integrate new merchants onto Amazon marketplace platform. Coordinated across a dozen Amazon Merchant Teams using proprietary workflow systems and services to allow new merchants to register and start listing items to sell in under 5 seconds. C++, Oracle. Also responsible for various internal support tools using Ruby on Rails, Perl/Mason and Perl CGI.
• Item Management / Catalog 2002 - 2003
  Developed systems to dynamically define new product categories through a simplified web interface and backend service. Tomcat/JSP front end, proprietary Oracle-backed service.
• Supply Chain Optimization, Vendor Management 1999 - 2002
  Development, maintenance, and support of 24/7 international procurement systems using Java, CORBA, Oracle, Perl, and Servlets.

Member of the Visualization & Data Analysis Group at the Numerical Aerospace Simulation Facility at NASA/Ames.

Responsibilities include:

• Developing network and visualization code for the distributed Collaborative Virtual WindTunnel
• Member of the Collaborative Tools Team investigating and developing software for group problem solving over the Internet.
• Developing educational applets for the Space Settlement outreach program.
• Maintaining and enhancing the NAS Large Data Set Archive and web site.
• Mentoring interns learning Java and other web technologies.

Member of the Virtual Environments Group in the Computing Technology Division. Project Lead on Advanced Rendering. Working to be a driving factor in Boeing technology development. Responsibilities include:

• Developing high performance rendering system for Virtual Reality and CAD. Integrated completed renderer into Division Inc. VR software.
• Designing and maintaining graphics and interface library for large scale CAD Generative Design application. Coordinating information and integrating code with large development team. Consistent release schedule maintained.
• Guiding and assessing latest graphics technologies by working with vendors, such as SGI, HP, and Division. Attending conferences.
• Teaching Java and Internet technologies at local high schools.

Member of the dynamic and self-directed "E-Mail Connection for Macintosh" development team. Responsibilities included design and development of object oriented subsystems and user interface components. Rapidly integrated new code into large pre-existing C++ code base and the PowerPlant Object Framework. Fast paced project demanded rapid assimilation of new techniques and development environments. With little guidance, became highly productive member of a gelled team in only a few months. Pressed CD of first beta on schedule.

Assigned under contract to NASA in the Computer Graphics and Scientific Visualization Group. Responsibilities included leading development of distributed network and graphics software in a multi-platform UNIX and Macintosh C++ environment, interacting with and supporting NASA scientists, and exploiting emerging technologies. Tasks have demanded excellent communication skills, self motivation, and creative problem solving. Consistently high performance reviews.

• Led design and development on an object oriented Motif/C++ application to determine shear stress from video images of a liquid crystal paint covered surface.
• OpenGL/X/Motif Objects: designed and implemented C++ class library for OpenGL graphics applications. Internal use with X/Motif projects.
• Distributed Film and Video Recording System (ViPS): led design and implementation of network communication, spooling, and recording subsystems for Ames-wide automated film/print/video hardcopy system using RPC and sockets. Project completed ahead of schedule, highly acclaimed, in operation for seven years so far with thousands of images produced.
• Video Animation System Distributed Library (VASlib): designed and implemented a video animation device driver, a network protocol for remote hardware control, and programmer's interface library for local or remote recording of workstation graphics. Used by ViPS and several NASA scientists to create video footage seen worldwide on stations like CNN and PBS.
• Distributed Graphics Development System: designed and implemented network interface for NASA's ARCGraph 3D graphics system.
• World Wide Web: produced Internet information database for graphics group. Created high profile and professional public appearance for work done within group.
• Clustered Distributed Renderer: designed and implemented prototype C++ application to generate high quality graphics images at supercomputing speeds. Using PVM toolkit over network cluster of SGI, SUN, DEC, IBM workstations. Code outperformed CRAY C90.
• Video Production: produced many animation videos on behalf of Ames researchers. Responsible for providing professional look to research presentations and press releases. Often done under tight submission deadlines, always completed on time.
• Published and co-authored technical reports and presented two papers on distributed computing at international conferences. Led many seminars on current topics for the NASA community.

Lectured, led discussion sections, graded programs, and held office hours for the core undergraduate Computer Science courses.

Publications & Presentations

• Reda, Wilder, Whitney, et al, "Areal Measurements of Surface Shear Stress Vector Distributions using Liquid Crystal Coatings." AIAA 96-0420, Invited Paper, 34th Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Reno, NV, January, 1996.
• E. Hibbard, M. Bauer, M. Bradshaw, G. Deardorff, K. Hu, D. Whitney, "Theory and Application of Stereographics in Scientific Visualization." in From Object Modeling to Advanced Visual Communication, Coquillart, StraBer, Stucki (Eds.), Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1994.
• E. Hibbard, D. Whitney, "ViPS: Visualization Printing System." Proceedings of CRAY Users Group, Fall 1992. Presentation given at CRAY Users Group Conference, Washington, D.C. September, 1992.
• D. Whitney, "VASlib: Video Animation System Distributed Library." NASA technical document, 1991.
• E. Hibbard, D. Whitney, K. Hu, "Distributed Graphics in a Supercomputing Environment." Proceedings of CRAY Users Group Conference, Fall 1991. Presentation given at CRAY Users Group, Santa Fe, NM, September 1991.

Outside Activities

Sailing, soccer, cycling, rowing, guitar, rock/mountain climbing, hiking, travel, crosswords, chocolate.
 
 
 

SOFTWARE SYSTEMS AND PROGRAMMING

      UNIX: (20+ years) Linux, (also Irix, Solaris, SunOS, Ultrix, Unicos, AIX, A/UX, BSD)
      Mac:  (10+ years) MacOS, MacOSX.
      X:    (10+ years) X Window System, X11, Xlib, OSF/Motif, twm, mwm

      LANGUAGES:      Java (10+ yrs), C/C++ (10+ yrs), Javascript (3 yrs), Ruby (3 yrs), Perl (3 yrs).
      misc:           SQL, Pascal, Fortran, APL, 6502 assembler, bash/csh, AppleScript

      FRAMEWORKS:     Spring, Mockito, JUnit, QUnit

      WEB:            YUI, JQuery, Ajax, JSON, Applets, Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS, Apache, Tomcat, Struts 2.0

      WINDOWING:      Java AWT/Swing, X Windows, Mac Interfaces, Event Driven Programming, GUI Design

      NETWORKING/     BSD Sockets, java.net, CORBA, OSF/DCE, SunRPC, TCP/IP
      DISTRIBUTED     PVM, MPI 

      PARALLEL:       SGI Parallel Libraries, Cray Vectorization, Shared Memory
      
      METHODOLOGIES:  Object Oriented Analysis, Design, and Programming, Coad/Yourdan OOD.

      GRAPHICS:       OpenGL/IrisGL, SGI Performer, HTML Canvas, java.awt, Xlib, Motif, QuickDraw, QuickDraw 3-D, PostScript.
      
      MACINTOSH:      Intermediate Macintosh Programming, Metrowerks PowerPlant Object Framework

      APPLICATIONS:   
      MACINTOSH       Photoshop, Canvas, DeBabelizer, MS Office, Omni, Adobe Premiere, Lightwave 3-D, Metrowerks CodeWarrior, Symantec C++, Script Editor

      SGI             Performer, Division dVise, CaseVision, Iris Explorer, Showcase

      UNIX TOOLS:     Emacs, git, Perforce, CVS, ClearCase, Purify, Eclipse

      HARDWARE SYSTEMS:       
      COMPUTERS:      SUN, SGI, DEC, Macintosh, Cray, RS/6000, PC, Amiga, X Terminals.

      VIDEO:          Video Toaster, SGI Galileo, Lyon Lamb MiniVAS Animation Controller & Real Time Scan Converter, IDEN TBC Time Base Corrector, 
                      Sony Betacam, Umatic, Hi-8 Editing Decks.

      CONFERENCES:    ACM/SIGGRAPH, ACM/CHI, NAB, InterOp, OOPSLA, Cray Users Group (CUG)
                      MacWorld, Xhibition, InterMedia, Usenix, Software Development, SGI Developers Forum, PNWSS