Resume

Mark W. Horovitz
P.O. Box 6528
Albany, CA 94706
mwhorovitz@gmail.com


QUALIFICATIONS:
Developed and tested instrumentation to detect and identify chemical and biological warfare (CBW) threats.

Created and led a large multi-disciplinary team that validated U.S. Department of Energy information systems.

Have extensive experience with quality assurance and development of software systems.

Have extensive experience with bio-medical computer applications and associated instrumentation.

Have experience with managing large and small project teams.

MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

At Univ. of California Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory created and led an 80 person multi-disciplinary team that completed validation studies of major U.S. Department of Energy information systems and developed methodology for validating a spectrum of information systems.

Managed an international inter-disciplinary team that developed a complex instrument that detects and identifies chemical and biological warfare threats. The instrument passed U. S. Army functional tests.

Developed and integrated novel technologies to detect and identify CBW threats.

At Starfish Software managed world-wide technical support of a wide range of software products.

At Starfish Software consistently found and logged the largest number of software bugs.

RELEVANT WORK EXPERIENCE

Work on the Chemical Biological Mass Spectrometer (CBMS) System:
I did this work first as an employee of Teledyne MEC and then continued it as an independent contractor through my own company (Computer Resulting). The CBMS was a complex instrument system designed for detecting and identifying chemical and biological warfare agents. It was funded by the U.S. Army. I worked on this project from 1989 through 1994 and intermittently did small tasks subsequently. The instrument consisted of an ion trap mass spectrometer and also included a virtual impactor particle separator, a pyrolyzer, a gas chromatograph column, a control computer and an analysis computer. The instrument passed U.S. Army tests in 1993/94; much of the technology developed in this project can now be found in commercial equipment that is available from Bruker Daltonics and from Agilent Technologies. Identification used MS and MS/MS spectra as well as timing information provided by pyrolysis and chromatography. In the CBMS project I was responsible for software development, systems test and acted as assistant project manager. The challenges in this project included creating a reliable instrument whilst using a set of immature technologies, coordinating the work of several commercial and University sub-contractors, establishing collaboration between team members dispersed in the U.S.A. and in Europe, and carrying out tests of dangerous materials. During much of the project, the mass spectral characteristics of target materials to be identified were not known because no functional instrument of this type existed. Hence it was necessary to develop several alternative analytical identification techniques. These include simple pattern matching, neural nets and statistical techniques.

At University of California Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
At Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL), I created and led a bio-medical computer applications section that provided computer applications and analytical support to the various bio-medical laboratories and projects at LBL. These included Donner Lab. and the BioDynamics Lab. I did data analysis, model construction and model fitting for a variety of applications including, for example, models of iron kinetics in humans. These were applied to diagnosis in clinical practice. I did some theoretical work on tracer kinetics in enzyme systems and models of tracer mineral and cellular kinetics in human and animal systems. I also worked on computer data acquisition systems for a variety of instruments such as optical, IR, NMR spectrometers and radiation detectors. Also at LBL, I created a project to validate major U.S. Department of Energy information systems and their data. The task was to validate several import DOE information systems and also to create a methodology for validation that could be applied to the approximately 150 information systems, data bases and computer models which the Department of Energy operated. To accomplish this I assembled a team of experts with knowledge in the areas of computer science, statistics, economics, operations research, sociology, etc. This team was able to investigate some crucial information systems and publish reports on them within one year and also develop methodology and processes that could then be applied to other such systems.

At Starfish Software:
I worked as a Senior Software Quality Assurance (Q.A.) Engineer and Manager of Technical Support at Starfish Software from October 1996 until January 2003. During that time I worked as an individual contributor and as project lead. I have worked on all product areas that exist at Starfish. These are focused on Personal Information Managers (PIMs) that are based on PC/desktop, web-based products, server products and small devices such as mobile phones. This technology has been incorporated into Motorola mobile phones. Another product area at Starfish is synchronization. This addresses the need to be able to transfer calendar appointments, contact and to-do lists etc. between various devices such as a web-based product, an office computer, home computer, Palm Pilot and mobile phone. This synchronization software can transfer data between all of these devices and ensure that the data are up-to-date and uniform at all locations; it also provides facilities for conflict resolution amongst various versions of the data. This technology has been integrated into IBM products and some mobile phone services.

My challenges at Starfish included adapting to many quick changes in project direction, urgent delivery schedules and delivering reliable products under these circumstances. I have a reputation for being productive - I found and documented over 1500 bugs and have the highest bug finding count of any individual at Starfish.

CHRONOLOGY

2003 -2006 Proprietor, Computer Resulting, Albany, CA
2002 - 2003 Manager, Technical Support Starfish Software, Scotts Valley, CA
1996 - 2002 Senior Software Q.A. Engineer Starfish Software, Scotts Valley, CA
1993 - 1996 Contract software development Computer Resulting, Watsonville, CA
1989 - 1992 Senior Software Engineer Teledyne MEC, Mountain View, CA
1974 - 1982 Senior Staff Scientist Univ. of California, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory


EDUCATION M. A. (Physics), Univ. Of California, Berkeley, CA
B.Sc. (Physics), Univ. Of London, London, U.K.
B.Sc. (Math. & Physics), Univ. Of London, London, U.K.