Current Career Goal: Immediate part-time work (20 hrs/wk), and full-time summer internship, complementing studies in sustainable business. Interested in green venture capital, socially responsible investment and wealth management, and uses of microfinance in U.S. cities to encourage resource-efficiency projects
I have extensive experience producing robust code to perform specified functions in an academic setting, two years of experience implementing software in a corporate setting, and a further six years in research and development, making contributions to the design of software products. I have a strong background in theoretical and computational approaches to linguistics and mathematics. I have experience in designing user interfaces, and user- and community-focused interactive web services. I am interested in alternative models of publication (especially of music and text), and use of information infrastructure to encourage grassroots engagement in civic life. I have experience as a tutor, which is applicable to dealing with inexperienced users in a support capacity, and to explaining the reasoning behind design decisions to more technically oriented developers. I have worked closely with intellectual property lawyers to shepherd my ideas through the process of translation into legal language, and filing documents with the US Patent and Trademark Office. I have learned to recruit, train, and motivate people, even in contexts where they may have no financial incentives.
EDUCATION:
August 2007 -- June 2009 (expected completion): Presidio School of Management, San Francisco, CA. MBA, emphasis in sustainable management practices and socially-responsible finance.
October 2005 -- March 2007: Professional training in management essentials, through "Motorola University" program.
May 2005 -- June 2006: Courses at the UC Berkeley Extension, preparatory for applying to MBA programs. (Statistics, Economics, Finance.)
January 2003: Basic training on Six-Sigma statistical process analysis for quality control.
Spring 2000: ArsDigita Bootcamp. Worked intensively with Tcl, ADP (like ASP but using Tcl script instead of JavaScript or VBScript), SQL, and PL/SQL. Designed interactive web services.
Fall 1999: School of Information Management and Systems, UC Berkeley. Enrolled in Master's program, did not complete due to financial and personal difficulties. Studied information architecture, human-computer interaction, interface design, and areas of "cyber-law" such as intellectual property and privacy. Research work is covered under Employment History.
Fall 1995 -- Spring 1999: Johns Hopkins University. BA Cognitive Science, BA Computer Science. Focused on Natural Language Processing. Research work is covered under Employment History.
SKILLS:
I have extensive experience working in *NIX, Windows (both 9x and NT), and MacOS environments, extensive experience setting up and maintaining Windows and MacOS, and some experience setting up and maintaining Linux. I have some experience working with the Oracle RDBMS.
I am familiar with the principles of software architecture, version control, bug tracking, and build management. I have experience using CVS and ClearCase for version control, and Bugzilla and ClearQuest / ClearDDTS for bug tracking.
I have extensive knowledge of text encoding systems (Unicode and various local encodings).
I have programming experience with:
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:
August 2001 -- November 2007: Predictive Input Product Team (formerly known as Lexicus Division), Motorola. Lead Engineer, Language Development. Developed and patented keypads for writing systems that previously did not have a native keypad entry system. Collected, verified, and packaged word lists for various languages (e.g. Vietnamese, Arabic, Hindi), for use in predictive text entry system for cell-phones (and other linguistic systems embedded in devices with limited interfaces). Developed and managed relationships with contractors to handle data validation at less than half the cost of methods used in the past.
November 2000 -- May 2001: Kivera. Software Engineer. Worked on development of a line of geographic information services. Enhanced generation of web-viewable images from map data. Collaborated on design of Perl/XML regression test tool for routing module.
March 2000 -- October 2000: Freelance web design.
Fall 1999: Unfamiliar Metadata Project at SIMS. Graduate Student Researcher. Research on indexing and retrieval of foreign language documents (focused on Tamil), and inverted use of "entry vocabulary modules" for classification of new documents.
Summer 1999: Microsoft, Publishing and Knowledge Management team. (PKM code became part of BackOffice Server.) Software Development Engineer Intern. Wrote DHTML and XML code and C++ ActiveX/ATL component for use in intro/walkthrough of application.
Spring 1999: Teaching Assistant / Grader for Agent-Based Simulations.
Fall 1998 -- Spring 1999: JHU Natural Language Processing Lab. Undergraduate Research Assistant to Dr. Eric Brill. Investigated part-of-speech tagging and other applications. Wrote Perl code implementing a technique known as Rule-Based Error-Driven Processing. Helped to prove generality of result that RBEDP achieves similar accuracy to other techniques, with less training data.
Summer 1998: IBM, TJ Watson Research Center, Human Language Technologies group. Research Intern. Worked primarily on interactive telephony and topic detection and tracking in news audio. Made minor contributions to other projects. Wrote Perl scripts for data conversion, supervised collection of voice data, reviewed specialized code for a numeric grammar, etc.
Fall 1997 -- Spring 1998, Fall 1998 -- Spring 1999: Johns Hopkins Writing Center. Peer Tutor. Counseled students on their papers and taught general writing skills. Installed and configured the Center's new PCs.
Summer 1997: Center for Social Organization of Schools. Created and maintained a database for books and other learning resources used by the Center in designing curricula for elementary and middle schools. The DB allowed staff to easily locate and reference the primary sources used in each unit of each course.
Fall 1996 -- Spring 1997: JHU Psycholinguistics Lab. Undergraduate Research Assistant to Dr. William Badecker. Recruiting and data collection from subjects, data processing, creation and modification of test scripts.
Summer 1996: National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging, Gerontology Research Center, Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biology, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Unit. Research Intern. Researched the effects of multi-site chemical exchange on nuclear magnetic resonance scans. Wrote Mathematica notebooks for experiments. Wrote "Methods" section of paper summarizing research. See Publications.
Fall 1994 -- Summer 1995: Department of Defense. Intern. Applied advanced mathematical programming to security goals.
PUBLICATIONS AND PATENTS:
US 7187365 B2: Indic intermediate code and electronic device therefor. Framework mapping native speakers' conception of writing, for Indic scripts such as Devanagari, onto digital text encoding, thus making user experience more intuitive.
WO 2006073580 A1: Candidate list enhancement for predictive text input in electronic devices. Method of improving prediction of desired words in phone text entry, based on analysis of previous selections.
US 7095403 B2: User interface of a keypad entry system for character input. Design of a phone keypad entry system for Thai and languages with similar complex scripts.
Spencer R.G.S., Horská A., and Harman M. Breakdown of the Ernst Formula in the Presence of Chemical Exchange and its Correction: Extension to 3- and N-Site Exchange Networks. Book of Abstracts, 6th Annual Congress of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, Sydney, Australia, April 1998.
MISCELLANEOUS:
March 2007: Profiled as Slate's Fact-Checking Department. Slate, owned by the Washington Post Co., had a 2006 U.S. readership of 4.6 million, according to Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore Media Metrix.
February 2007 -- Present: Board Member, Peninsula Democratic Coalition. Responsible for coordination between PDC and Peninsula Young Democrats.
January 2007 -- Present: Elected delegate from Assembly District 21 to California Democratic Party State Central Committee.
October 2006 -- Present: Individual Member, Unicode Consortium. Minor participant in discussions of development of support for representing complex writing systems as digital data. Contributed to discussions of Devanagari, Malayalam, etc.
March 2006 -- November 2006: Volunteer with Angelides gubernatorial campaign. Initially worked on fundraising and recruitment. Served as Convention Floor Whip. Formed and chaired Grassroots Steering Committee for Santa Clara County. Worked with Northern Santa Clara County United Democratic Campaign to ensure availability of Angelides resources and coordination of campaign activities.
August 2002 -- August 2003: Volunteer with Palo Alto Humane Society. Worked at shelter, cleaning beds and litterboxes, filling food and water bowls, socializing cats. Worked at monthly adoption fairs, monitoring cats and visitors. Created mailing list and database to coordinate feral cat fostering program, which places ferals with families able to devote the time necessary to domesticate them so they can be given to permanent adoptive homes.
September 2000 -- March 2005: Editor in Reviews Department of award-winning online magazine Strange Horizons. Directed coverage of "new media" (any stories or non-fiction outside the basic "book" model of publishing). Served as Senior Editor during latter two years, managing two editors, various reviewers (independent contractors), and an aide responsible for contact with publishers. Produced CGI scripts for reader survey and Readers' Choice Awards polls.
Spring 1999: Inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.
Spring 1998: Inducted into Golden Key National Honor Society.
Fall 1996 -- Spring 1999: Officer of Johns Hopkins University Choral Society.
1996-97 Publicity Officer: created and distributed publicity materials.
1997-98 Secretary: maintained membership records.
1998-99 President: acted as liaison to Student Activities Committee,
negotiated with potential tour locations, arranged concert time and
location, etc.
Spring 1995: Received Rensselaer Medal for Excellence in Science and Mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, upon graduation from Mt. Hebron High School, Ellicott City, MD.
Fall 1992: Earned first degree black belt in Ninpō Taijutsu. Worked as uke (practice attacker) at Women's Self Defense seminars over following two years.
REFERENCES: Available upon request.
My email address is: rmharman@auros.org
This page last updated: Feb 26
Copyright © 1998-2008 R Michael Harman