Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Thanksgiving

Last weekend was thanksgiving in Canada, a chance to enjoy a great turkey dinner (by candle light in Victoria), take a day off of work, and kick off the new NHL season (Go Leafs Go!). This year I have a lot to give thanks for. Not only did my wife and I celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary and my daughter celebrated her first birthday, we also found out that we are expecting our second child (ETA January 2009). As well, on July 9th I successfully defended my PhD, bringing 13 years of computer science education to an end.

I started studying computer science in 1995 at the University of Waterloo. Throughout my undergraduate degree I had a chance to work at some pretty cool places, including Manulife Financial, ATI Technologies, and Trilogy Software. In 2000, when most of my friends were heading off to industry to take advantage of everything the dot-com boom had to offer, I decided to head back to Waterloo for a Master's degree. I studied reverse engineering under Dr. Andrew Malton in the Software Architecture Group (SWAG). I completed my Master's in 2002 and in 2003 I headed west. Landing in Victoria, I decided to start a PhD with the Computer Human Interaction and Software Engineering Lab (CHISEL) under the supervision of Dr. Margaret-Anne (Peggy) Storey. I could not imagine working for a more encouraging supervisor. Peggy, your kindness and enthusiasm will never be forgotten. In addition to studying at UVic, I was also given the opportunity to work with the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS). My IBM mentor was Ed Merks.

Now, after 13 years of school, I am finally heading out to the "real-world". Because of the enthusiastic community and great technology, I have decided to take a job that will bring me even closer to Eclipse. I will be working with Jeff, Chris and Scott at Code 9. I will be spending some time doing Zest development, but this job will also bring me much closer to Equinox and the Eclipse run-time space. I will be transitioning throughout the fall as I am still teaching a course at UVic and finishing off a few projects. I'm looking forward to working with all of you!

4 comments:

AlBlue said...

First, congratulations on defending your PhD. It's a kong, thankless slog most of the time and not everyone makes it.

Second, congratulations on the upcoming sprog. Also on the plan to get the PhD under wraps before you have anything else to (un)wrap. Kids and ... well, anything that involves spare time don't really share much in common.

Last, congrats on the Code9 position - it's a company that's going places.

Alex

Ernie said...

Congrats, Ian. Sadly I don't think you will get much joy from the Leafs this year!

You coming out for CASCON?

Denis Roy said...

What an exciting blog post to read... Congratulations for everything (except the Leafs partisanship -- I just can't :)

Marcelo Paternostro said...

Congrats man!!! You beat us and finished your PhD before the EMF book :-P

Wow... A second kid? You must be nuts ;-)