Doctor of Philosophy

I'm planning to get my Ph.D. here at UCSC, in Software Engineering. I was hoping to do something in the area of Human Computer Interaction, specifically for computer graphics and animation software.... I would love to make software and work on problems for the entertainment industry. This means modeling and animating the natural world and the plants and creatures in it. As it turned out, none of the professors in my department right now do explicit research in Human Computer Interaction. The software I had in mind is very complex, and Software Egineering studies the building and maintaining of complex software, so that seemed to be a good fit.

After moving to Software Engineering, I discovered Doug Engelbart's "Unfinished Revolution". The goals Engelbart has persued during his career meshed well with a side project I had a few years ago. After talking with my new advisor, Jim Whitehead, the side project became my Ph.D. project, Whisper. Assuming a seven year plan, I will graduate in 2008.

After...

After the Ph.D. what I'll do is anyone's guess. Maybe I'll be married and have kids, I may have changed my mind about what I want to be when I grow up, I may decide I want to get another Ph.D. (okay... not likely). I've thought that it might be nice to live in Hawaii (good weather), but I may want to work for Pixar, or ILM. Or maybe my advisors will convince me to become a professor. Eventually, there's a good chance I will become a professor, at least part time.

Ideally though, Humane Software will be a viable company that can be my personal sandbox over the decades that follow. Fortunately, Kate seems to like the idea of living in Hawaii.