+1 (412) 363-6133
jl+@cs.cmu.edu
  911 South Negley Avenue
Pittsburgh, Pa 15232-2611

Juan Leon


Educational Background

Carnegie Mellon University
M.S. in Computer Science (1992)
Completed all pre-dissertation requirements for Ph.D.
Proposed and started dissertation work (1993)
Dissertation: Translucid fail-stop tolerance for long-lived distributed programs

Carnegie Mellon University
B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mathematics (1987)
David Tuma award to best undergraduate research. University Honors.

Work Experience

Carnegie Technology Education, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Senior Academic and Technical Analyst (June 1999 - present)
Playing several instrumental roles. Achievements include:

Course Management System: Developed and enhanced two course delivery and management systems which thousands use to: view content, take and grade exams, view records, collect statistics, manage rosters, institutions, schedules, track student and instructor progress and promotion, audit access and payment. Most functions are available over web interfaces, and evolve as the business processes they support are tuned. Conducted requirement collection, design and code reviews. Second-level support. Implemented with three-tier Oracle web infrastructure, Apache, perl, PHP and ODBC. Evaluated performance through simulated loads based on logged transactions, identified and relieved system-wide bottlenecks.

Database Management: Architected and administered Oracle 8i data bases on Solaris Enterprise and Linux servers. Designed and developed fifty-table database that supports hundreds of transactions per second. Established backup and recovery procedures, live atomic content updates, and interfaces for incorporating content in diverse external formats via XML/XSL and custom programs.

IT infrastructure: Directed operations and development of support infrastructure such as secure intranet sites, authenticated email servers and agents, workstation cloning, collaboration software, backups and networking. Designed tools for monitoring 24/7 operation of business-critical services.

Course Development: Developed and maintained online modules for a software development curriculum used at tens of institutions world-wide. Topics include Visual Basic Controls, Visual C++, user interface testing, memory hierarchies, DLLs, multithread programming, TCP, Corba, and Java RMI. Created lecture notes, examples, extended programmming exercises, exam questions, standards for grading, measurement of student performance for quality control, and oversight and certification of on-site lecturers.

Customer Relations: Coordinated course delivery at the premier technical university in Mexico (ITESM). Liased with top administration to oversee scheduling, teacher training, and to resolve emergencies, personnel issues. Rolled out new academic and retraining programs that have hundreds of students and continue to grow, now with funding from the Mexican federal government.

Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Research Systems Programmer (June 1995 - May 1999)
As part of the Advanced Systems Group spearheaded the development of distributed computing at this "big-iron" center. Particularly:

Cluster Deployment and Administration: Deployed and managed computing clusters used by PVM/MPI scientific applications. Beta-tested novel interconnect (Memory Channel). Automated remote system management. Extended PBS to support NT/Linux dual-boot and metacomputing resource hierarchies. Architected WWW-DCE authentication bridge. Designed interfaces for practical parallel I/O. Documented systems and trained system administrators. Supported and trained scientists migrating to clusters.

Technology Transfer: Wrote proposals (funded) for deployments of resource-managed clusters at the University of Pittsburgh and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Developed and imparted courses on PVM, MPI, resource scheduling, and cluster development.

Representation: Represented the center on a range of technical issues at strategic negotiations, standard-setting bodies, international conferences, symposia and workshops.

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Adjunct Faculty (Nov 1996-Jun 1999)
Taught Operating Systems to graduate and advanced undergraduate students in the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science. Evaluated very positively by students and full professors. Left imprint through processes, assignments and documents that remain in use. Specifically:

  • Built and enhanced tools to emulate SPARC hardware with support for virtual memory, I/O controllers, and disks. Trickery included the use of custom memory maps, signal handlers, and stack overwrites. Modified every semester.
  • Intensively guided students, one-on-one, in implementing UNIX-like operating system kernels, device drivers and file systems.
  • Optimized grading through extensive test sets and processes. Delivered weekly lectures, wrote and graded exams, projects, and exercises. Managed teaching assistants and grading staff.

Multimedia Networking Consultant (Jun 1998-Dec 1989)
Coordinated, integrated and deployed infrastructure for networking seminar held simultaneously at Harvard and Carnegie Mellon. This was the first application of its type on the experimental vBNS network, with lectures delivered from both sites and unbuffered rich-media interaction between remote participants.

Research Assistant (Jan 1986-May 1992)
Conducted research on speech recognition, application-specific processors, coprocessor design, computer vision, and compilers for parallel computers.

Robotics Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Consultant (Apr 1997-Aug 1997)
Readied and deployed navigational software to control Nomad, the autonomous planetary robot developed and tested under the auspices of the NASA telerobotics program.

Galt Technologies Inc. (now Intuit), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Consultant (Apr 1995-Aug 1995)
Rearchitected financial quote server to scale its performance by distributing its functions over a network.

Digital Equipment Corp., Paris, France
Research Intern (Jul 1991-Jan 1992)
Designed a hardware implementation of Wu's algorithm for real-time color quantization of video streams.

Schlumberger Laboratory for Computer Science, Austin, Texas
Summer Intern (May 1990-Aug 1990)
Explored automatic generation of parallel scientific codes.

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York
Summer Intern (May 1987-Aug 1987)
Designed motherboard for portable computer.

Systems and Other Experience

C, C++, Java, Perl, Lisp, Javascript, HTML, HTTP, DHTML, XML, XSL, Xerces, Linux, Solaris, GNU tools, Apache, CGI, mod_perl, mod_php, sendmail, cyrus, Oracle, MySQL, SQL, ODBC, PHP, Tcl/Tk, DCE, Corba, RMI, Jini, MPI, MPI-IO, PVM, NGIO, CVS, Perforce.

Other Skills and Interests

Fluent in English, native Spanish, conversational French; some professional translation experience.
Radio DJing and production.
Literature, music, skiing, cycling, travel, drama.


Juan Leon
Last modified: Tue Apr 24 16:54:27 EDT 2001