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Summary

Linux kernel expert with 10 years industry experience in Linux/UNIX kernel development

Objective

Short-term consulting engagements providing exceptional Linux expertise and knowledge

Education

B.S. Computer Science, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, New Mexico, May 1999
B.S. Mathematics, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, New Mexico, May 1999

Experience

Founder and Principal Consultant
VAA Consulting
5/07 to present

• Assisted with software design for flagship storage applications
• Debugged silent data corruption on SSDs
• Improved performance of ext3 file system check by 50% on RAID-5
• Root-caused performance problem with directory fsync on ext3
• Debugged TCP/IP kernel modules

• Contributed substantially to Red Hat file system strategy
• Implemented 64-bit support for ext4 file system utilities
• Implemented file system namespace unioning
• Speaker and organizer for 2008 Linux Storage and File Systems Workshop
• Served on program committee for world's premier file systems and storage conference USENIX FAST '09

• Wrote the popular Kernel Hacker's Bookshelf column for Linux Weekly News
• Wrote 10+ articles on advanced file systems and storage topics
• Wrote an introduction to developing Linux kernel modules including udev support
• Researched and wrote technology analysis reports for internal company use

• Designed and developed chunkfs, a new Linux file system
• Organized first ever Linux File Systems Workshop
• Wrote and merged to mainline patches for file systems, VFS, and glibc
• Wrote the ebizzy benchmark to test performance of multi-threaded memory allocation and VMA lookup
• Published papers and gave talks at Ottawa Linux Symposium, Linux Conference Australia, O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Hot Topics in Dependability, and many Linux users' groups
• Wrote "Kernel Hacker's Bookshelf" series for Linux Weekly News
• Maintained Tulip ethernet driver

• Supported large IBM Linux customers remotely and on-site
• Root-caused silent data corruption bugs in SATA disk driver and GPFS clustered file system
• Debugged hardware failures in some of the world's largest Linux clusters
• Tuned performance of customer applications in competitive evaluation environment
• Taught Linux kernel development classes
• Profiled and tuned Linux for customer applications

• Key developer and architect for ZFS, a new file system for Solaris
• Worked on Solaris operating system on SPARC, x86, Opteron
• Root-caused and fixed long-standing UFS and VxFS directory bugs
• Wrote and published technical papers on ZFS and other topics
• Mentored and supervised other developers
• Led women in engineering activities

Senior Software Engineer
Synergy Microsystems
2/01 to 6/02

• Maintained Linux kernel port for SMP PowerPC platform
• Brought up Linux kernel on new hardware platforms
• Debugged and fixed serial and network drivers
• Root-caused SCSI disconnect problem caused by BIOS bug
• Fixed and shipped patches for showstopper bugs within hours or days
• Wrote and debugged code for:
  • Interprocessor communication
  • Interrupt request service routines
  • Memory management
  • First stage bootloader
• Mentored and supervised other developers

Software Engineer
Essential Communications
1/00 to 2/01

• Designed and implemented a Linux-based network appliance
• Measured and improved network performance
• Wrote new code and bug fixes at every level of Linux TCP/IP stack
• Ported gcc-based compiler to i960RN processor
• Mentored and supervised other developers

Software Engineer
Applied Physics, Inc.
6/99 to 12/99

• Maintained real-time signal processing software on 4-node UNIX cluster
• Fixed long-standing mathematical errors in signal processing code

Selected publications

• A File Systems Reading List, appeared in Linux Weekly News.
• /dev/hello_world: A Simple Introduction to Device Drivers under Linux, appeared in O'Reilly Linux Dev Center.
• The 2006 Linux File Systems Workshop, appeared in Linux Weekly News.
• Chunkfs: Using divide-and-conquer to improve file system reliability and repair, appeared in USENIX Hot Topics in Dependability 2006.

Projects and activities

• Founder of the Linux File Systems Workshop
• Program chair of Linux File Systems Workshop '06 and StorageSS Workshop '07
• Served on program committee for USENIX Technical Conference '04, FREENIX '05, Ottawa Linux Symposium '04 and '05, StorageSS Workshop '06, Linux Storage and File Systems Workshop '07, '08, and '09, and USENIX FAST (File systems And Storage Technology) '09
• Wrote and collected questions for the TCP/IP Drinking Game
• Maintained Gemini (PowerPC variant) Linux port
• Wrote interprocessor communication routines for new interrupt controller
• Wrote fully transparent TCP proxy using Linux packet filtering
• Designed and implemented an FPGA-based pipelined microprocessor