Faculty Notes Continued
Ben Burrell
As I mentioned in the last newsletter, I’ll be teaching a new honors course in the Spring on mobile computing using App Inventor (see http://appinventor.mit.edu/). I spent some time this summer developing the course (even had to break down and buy an Android phone!) and a website for it. The website is still under development, see https://sites.google.com/site/honr292androidapps, but check it out after the course begins since there will be links to student portfolios.
On the leisure side, my wife and I were able to go "Back home again in Indiana" for her 50+ years high school reunion and our scattered about family was able to spend a couple of days together at the OBX. Here is a pic near Currituck Lighthouse of our daughter Lisa (Houston) with our grandkids Benny and Sophie.
The Alumni Corner
John and Mary are 1984 graduates of our Computer Science program. Mary majored in Mathematics and minored in Computer Science; John majored in English and minored in Computer Science. They both spent long nights working in the computer center and at Hardee's getting a midnight breakfast.
After graduating, Mary spent 15 years working for government contractors at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, doing computer programing, data analysis, system administration and presentation graphics to support research scientists. John spent a year working for the Office of Management and Budget in Washington D.C. to gain experience before starting graduate school. John received a master's degree in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary in December of 1986 and joined PRC, A NASA contractor in the Hampton Roads area.
John and Mary were married in May of 1987. John joined NASA as a research scientist working on intelligent flight control systems in 1987 and entered the Ph.D. program at William and Mary. John completed his PhD in 1992 and spent the next six years working on flight simulations systems at NASA's Langley Research Center.
John and Mary moved to Leesburg, Virginia in 1998. John spent two years as the Vice President of Research at Cigitial, a small startup that focused on software quality, reliability, and safety. Mary worked at GRCI in Vienna as technical liaison, security token manager and intranet support wizard. Mary spent a lot of her daily commutes stuck on the Dulles Toll Road trying to figure out why people in Northern Virginia drove so poorly.
The next stop (2001 - 2003) was two years in beautiful (yes, it was beautiful) Freehold, New Jersey where John served as the Vice President of the Software Technology Center at Lucent's Bell Labs. That was followed by an almost five years (2003 - 2007) in Woodbridge, Virginia. John spent four years as the Chief Technology Officer and Deputy Chief Information Officer at NASA and a year as the Deputy Chief Information Officer at the Department of Commerce.
In 2008 John and Mary moved to Redmond Washington. John is currently the Chief Information Officer at Watermark Estate Management Services, LLC, a small privately owned company based in Kirkland Washington.
Mary spends much of her free time caring for her family and their two Boxer puppies, Thelma and Louise. Thelma and Louise spend most of their time celebrating that they won the "puppy lottery" and have such a wonderful home. John spends his free time enjoying the company of his amazing wife and two silly boxers.