22 April 2009

Areas of some expertise

I've worked with the following, which I'll elaborate more on later:

  • IP network protocols (custom and RFC'd)
  • cryptography (encryption, authentication)
  • computer graphics incl. animation
  • computer image and motion processing
  • human vision research
  • RAID
  • hardware design (verilog)
  • medical embedded firmware

Some of these are related and some led to others (eg learning about how IP is sending postcards let to curiousity about how encryption worked).

In crypto and in medical, you need to think about what can go wrong. In medical you have failure modes effects analysis (FMEA) and hazards analysis & amelioration. In crypto you play a game where you ask, at each step, what can the adversary do? In this way crypto is like chess or the law. In law, you generate contracts to handle every case. You have to do this with medical firmware too. The device will always have some state, so you have to make it safe, even at the cost of availability.

Anyway this used to look scattered on a resume, now it shows that I am flexible and like to learn new domains. A toolmaker. One interested in biological computing, and massive synthetic computing, hardware of all sorts.