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Projects are coming and going and sometimes
it is difficult to keep this page up-to-date, simply because
I am usually working on multiple projects at the same time. This page
will give you an idea of what I have worked on but for more current information on what's cooking now, please visit the
activities
page.
National Science Foundation
The Center for Advanced Materials Research (NSF's CAMR) is an
independent academic unit at Brown University, whose goals are to
coordinate and facilitate research and education in materials sciences
across the campus, as well as to foster inter-institutional scholarship
and study of modern materials by advanced experimental and theoretical
tools. The Center is an umbrella organization, presently anchored within
several engineering disciplines, and the departments of physics and
chemistry at Brown, with developing links to biology and biomedical
sciences.
The organizational and administrative purpose of the Center is
three-fold: to catalyze and enable multi-investigator, interdisciplinary
faculty research teams to operate effectively within a block research
grant style supporting framework; to administer and foster several
central research laboratory facilities; and to explore the development
of interdepartmental educational programs in modern materials science
education both on- and off-campus.
The fruits from basic materials research can be arguably viewed as
precursors to most breakthroughs in 20th century technologies. The
underlying research was usually conducted along well defined avenues of
established disciplines: structural/mechanical engineering, electronic
engineering, solid state physics, chemistry and chemical engineering,
and so on, mirroring the departmental structure in university science
departments. As the next century beckons, it is becoming quite evident
that increasingly multifunctional or 'smart' materials will emerge as
the new frontier of not only materials sciences but within modern
physical sciences as a whole. In this new era of materials research,
truly pioneering activity that opens new fields of scholarship and
technology will require the merging of many traditionally separate,
sometimes isolated disciplines of sub-disciplines.
We have continuously provided expertise for CAMR both in analysis and
application phase of systems development lifecycle. We helped them
improve their user efficiency by assessing, re-modeling, and improving
existing software and hardware IT infrastructure, including Windows
Workstations, Linux Workstations, portable computing, audio/video
equipment, printing, networking and distant management. We customized
existing setup for users’ time recording and access control on
sophisticated equipment, improved software package in use. We built,
installed, and tested new software and hardware setup for some of CAMR's
and Brown University's biggest laboratories integrating several computer
systems with external electronic equipment. We prepared technical
documentation and provided user training.
Technology used: Software design and development, Hardware integration,
Multi-user systems setup, Networking and Security, Microscope-specific
software customization and setup, Technical documentation development.
Center for Environmental Studies
Without doubt one of our favorite projects! As we think, we realize that
the human society is beginning to recognize the pressing need to solve
the multitude of environmental problems which have arisen over time and
which continue to grow today. These environmental problems stem from
patterns of human interaction with the earth and its ecosystems and from
various societies' unsustainable use of natural resources. The Center
for Environmental Studies (CES) at Brown University was established with
the primary aim of educating individuals to solve challenging
environmental problems, both at the local and global levels. CES also
works directly to improve human well-being and environmental quality
through community, city, and state partnerships in service and research.
A guiding principle of CES's activities is the integration of teaching,
research, and service. Educational, research, and community service aims
are simultaneously met through CES activities and programs and
positively reinforce each other. A second principle is CES's applied
approach to environmental education and problem-solving. CES students
and faculty address local environmental problems, working towards their
practical resolution. In response to Brown University's location in the
midst of a major U.S. city, CES focuses primarily on urban environmental
problems. Within this focus, CES has emphasized issues of solid and
hazardous waste, environmental health, and environmental justice. At the
national level, CES has interest and expertise in environmental
accounting and insurance arrangements and in pollution prevention and
toxics policies.
As we mentioned in the Small & Large Businesses projects page, we have
always been fans of supporting companies with which we share interests
and ideals. With the CES project, we went even a little further - we
became a part of a global trend - addressing challenging environmental
problems. We realize that it is difficult for one small group to make a
difference in something of such proportions, but we do realize that
playing an important role in educating individuals and raising awareness
among other groups is a big step in the right direction. Our thoughts
are that providing those individuals with the right software and
hardware tools, will result in higher effectiveness and larger number of
positive results in solving environmental problems.
Our part in this comprised mainly in collecting data and analyzing
department systems and active processes, serving as a liaison between
technical and non-technical staff, handling all software/ hardware
resources purchases and allocation. Other duties included building
network infrastructure and supporting existing equipment, installing,
configuring, troubleshooting, upgrading, and documenting PCs and WAN/LAN
infrastructure. Built custom software. We smoothly performed transition
of department’s server from Windows NT to Windows Server 2003 and
secured the department network, increasing number of users by 350% and
decreasing registered repair tickets by 80%. Our customized new system
allows complex interactions and increased abilities, such as server side
scripting (PHP, Pearl, Java servlets), improved web site performance,
secure connections, etc. which is sure to increase students' involvement
in the Department's activities.
Technology used: Software design and development, Web development, MySQL,
.NET, PHP, Network and web security and firewall administration, Windows
NT and Windows 2003 Server administration, XML driven applications
development, Software support, Hardware maintenance, Administrative
management, IT Consulting.
DisplayLab
The Display and Photonics Laboratory focuses on liquid crystal and
polymer materials for flat panel displays, telecommunications and
electro-optic applications. Before 1960, liquid crystals were virtually
unknown. Today they are all around us: they are used for electronic
displays in wristwatches, calculators, laptop computers, and are now
beginning to penetrate into the large-area desktop computer market,
threatening the century old domination of cathode-ray-tubes (CRT); they
are also an important component in high-strength fibers; and they
naturally occur in the cell membranes of many biological systems. Their
greatest technological impact has been in electronic displays where the
liquid crystal display (LCD) market continues to experience explosive
growth. It is not surprising then, that research in liquid crystal and
polymer materials is a high priority in many university, industrial and
government laboratories.
DisplayLab's basic research is guided by current needs in the
information display and photonics industry involving spatial light
modulators for displays, projectors, and optical processing; elements
for integrated optics and the fiber optics industry; reflective displays
and notch filters; switchable windows; and novel uses of polymer
microstructures for electro-optic applications. Another major emphasis
is dispersions of liquid crystals and polymers, liquid crystal polymers,
and reactive mesogens to produce light modulators with different optical
performance parameters. A holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystal
(H-PDLC), is fabricated by interfering two counter-propagating laser
beams on a liquid crystal- polymer mixture to form an electrically
active hologram. H-PDLC materials are useful for reflective devices for
direct-view, low power display applications and optical switches for the
fiber optics industry. Other ongoing projects include infrared
modulators, field-effect devices, laser projection, color reflective
displays, switchable diffraction gratings, ferroelectric switching,
polymer stabilization, basic studies of molecular and mesoscopic
self-assembly of reactive mesogens, and the application of
phenomenological models to understand the effect of confinement and
external constraints on liquid crystals and polymers.
Our part in all that included basic understanding of the DisplayLab
functions but good enough to be able to provide it with comprehensive
software support and clean artistic web, presentations and publications
design and layout solutions. It also included creating custom software
applications and providing the laboratory with means for remote
supervision and distant management and learning.
Technology used: Web application development, Microsoft Office
applications environment development, Publications layout design,
Pre-publishing layout and formatting, Windows 2000 Server
administration, Multimedia solutions.
Department of Economics, Brown University
The Economics Department is one of the oldest department at Brown. Our
work for it involved redesigning and recreating the web administrators'
interface for interacting with the University's database. It consisted
of building a secure and reliable interface for a centralized repository
and in the same time making the entire user interface as user-friendly
as possible, facilitating the exchange of information, the process of
updating the database, the involved paperwork, etc. Implementing this
medium-scale enterprise solution, facilitated the users in building a
support network and managing it through the website, made it compatible
and expandable to different platforms, and allowed the further
development of the system to base upon a database design that it is
scalable to suit the needs of 10 or 10 000 users. Additional
enhancements included personal interaction between the users of the
project, interface for acquiring feedback, etc.
Technology used: MySQL, PHP, PEAR, Web application development, OOP
Programming, WDSL/SOAP modelling, PHP-Java interaction via SOAP, XML,
SSL/PHP/MySQL services under Windows Server 2003 (IIS 6.0).
WebTAShack
WebTAShack is the release name of the MANGAL project, which stands for
'Multi-user Application for Networked Grading, Assistance, and Learning'
and is a multi-tier software package providing a more organized /
centralized infrastructure to the TA system in the Computer Science
department at Brown University. It was motivated by the following facts:
student grades were assigned mostly using hacked-up, old PERL/python
text-file based scripts;
the scripts were often 'snatched' from other/former courses and tweaked
so they'd work with only this one and its particular grading policies;
to accomplish the above, a TA would have to either know or learn PERL
and the old scripts' particular implementation to be able to modify and
utilize them;
all of these scripts were text file-based, which means that student
grades are stored in plain text files, kept in different course folders,
protected with nothing but with basic security.
All these 'features' made it almost impossible for the students to track
their progress in real time, for the UTAs to make decent statistics
about performance in class, for the HeadTAs to securely store class
data, etc. In these terms WebTAShack: is an HTML end application that
communicates with a server and several security controllers; is modular
and easily upgradeable; has well organized maintenance features; allows
multi-level access. The ones existing now are T-Staff, MetaTA,
Professor, MetaTA, HeadTA, TA, Student but new ones can easily be
created on demand; protects securely course information on several
levels - it uses a complex security authentication / management /
monitoring system; is stable - runs well and is able to be easily
supported.
So, to summarize, WebTAShack is a stable, modular, and secure framework
for a server/client course work implementation and communication. It is
virtually an API with the ability to load 'modules', be managed from a
central server, and display dynamic content.
As the creators of the project we believed that the Undergraduate
Teaching Assistants (UTA) Program in the department is vital to its
future success and expansion, as well as being a great academic
experience. In these terms the WebTAShack project was motivated by
certain shortcomings of the current implementation of the UTA program.
More precisely, we felt that a greater degree of centralization in
course management, grading standards, and procedures, as well as the
ability to enforce them would be vital for the development of the
program. Such centralization of student and course information into a
database allows for immediate review of student progress, attendance and
drop out rates for courses, assignment and course difficulty (as
measured by different indicators), as well as other interesting
correlations and data mining such as preferred groups of courses (taken
concurrently), information that would be definitely useful to students
and professors alike. The system was designed to save the TAs valuable
time in managing the administrative aspect of their course and allowing
them to focus on assisting students; to minimize time put into
maintenance on behalf of the technical staff, and to allow the
professors to be better informed of the proceedings of their course
without placing an additional burden on the TAs.
Technology used: C++, Java, OOP programming in PHP (as the middle-ware
implementation) and PEAR, software development )database-independent
application in PHP), SSL/PHP/MySQL services under Linux, IDS
(third-party) authentication software, Database Sandbox Abstraction
(security and granularity when multiple uses share the same server).
BioMed Pathology & Laboratory Medicine
The Pathology & Laboratory Medicine Clinical Department is a part of the
BioMed Department at Brown University with 5,500 undergraduates
students, 1,300 graduate students, and 290 medical students enrolled
annually. Predoctoral and postdoctoral training in Environmental
Pathology is funded by a training grant from the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences. The predoctoral training program is a
subtrack in the Pathobiology Graduate Program at Brown University. This
is a multidisciplinary program involving faculty from the Departments of
Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Radiation Medicine, Surgery, Medicine,
and Immunology in the Division of Biology and Medicine at Brown
University. The goal of this program is to provide research training for
predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees in basic mechanisms of disease
related to environmental exposures including radiation, electromagnetic
fields, stress, mineral fibers, and chemicals. Trainees apply the tools
of morphology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and cell biology to
explore the causes and pathogenesis of cancer, reproductive dysfunction,
and immune dysfunction related to environmental exposures. This training
program helps trainees develop skills required for professional
development and provides exposure to recent advances in related
disciplines including molecular pathology, epidemiology, occupational
medicine, and public policy.
As always, our services have turned out to be indispensable in
facilitating the functions of the department. We engineered and created
series of custom software products dealing with tracking and
manipulating entries in various complex database structures.
Unfortunately, we cannot go into further details about that project.
Technology used: Java, FileMaker Database, Software Application
Development, VBA.
Live for Liberia
The African country of Liberia (which was founded by freed slaves from
the USA) has been in a constant state of civil war, rebel fighting, and
desperation that has come to the world’s attention only this year. Over
the past decade, an estimated 200,000 people have been killed, mostly
civilians, and more are dying every day from starvation and lack of
medical attention. In response to this situation, students at Brown
University have mobilized to raise awareness and money for humanitarian
aid efforts going on in Liberia.
The nation of Liberia is in dire need of international humanitarian
assistance, and the Brown community, in cooperation with the African
Alliance of Rhode Island, the Brown Democrats, Adopt A Doctor
organization, the Liberian Community Association, the African Alliance
of Rhode Island, and the Chaplain's Office at Brown University are
working in collaboration with the "Live for Liberia!" student planning
committee to make this foundation as positive and effective as possible
in achieving its goal: a large package of humanitarian aid to be sent to
Liberia.
We supported the project with as much as we could - complete IT support,
including website development, IT consulting, workstation networking and
education seminars.
Safe-Way Electric Motor Co.
Safe-Way Electric Motor Company has been established in Rhode Island in
1900, more than 104 years ago. The company deals with electric motors
and related equipment sales. After having us to do some work on their
office network and on the custom software they use in their everyday
business, they told us that it was too bad that we haven't been around
to help out for those 104 years. Indeed, we found the company's computer
infrastructure in close to horrible condition, due to previous
incompetent interventions. Safe-Way has never been in as good shape as
it is now.
Safe-Way Electric Motor Co. contacted us a while ago with a request for
a problem that needed one-time intervention to resolve. We promptly took
care of it as always. Apparently the way we provided the solution did
not go unnoticed by the company's management and soon they became one of
our regular clients.
We cannot disclose the specifics of the assignments we had with them,
but in general we, the technologies that we employed were access
database customization and maintenance, VBA scripting, extensive
networking and network optimization and security, server side scripting
(php, perl/cgi) and software developing (VB, JAVA).
Technology used: Software rehabilitation and customization, Systems
renovation and update, Access Database, VBA, VB, JAVA, Web design, Web
scripting, hardware upgrade and maintenance, recovery.
Ground Flora
Not a very big project but worth mentioning since we love the home
business that those people have. They do garden designs and landscaping,
and they do it beautifully. We helped them purchase their computer
equipment, set it up, network it and secure it and have provided them
with continuous support since then. We prefer to be discrete about home
office projects like this one and we will not get into details about the
services provided there or at other locations.
Technology used: Various.
Entrepreneurship at Brown
Multidisciplinary teams of students from engineering and other technical
and non-technical disciplines form a core business unit to work on an
industry-defined problem beginning from product conception to
commercialization under this pilot program at Brown University.
Intellectual property, marketing and market analysis, human factors,
safety and environmental concerns, and legal considerations are
emphasized. The intent of the program is to assemble student teams with
core competencies in different areas. It is expected that each team
member will bring a different skill set to the project. The main
requirements are enthusiasm and a willingness to work in a "real-world"
environment.
The project is experimental in nature, and in fact is the subject of a
parallel study on how to effectively organize instruction in this area.
In addition to the instructors (Prof. Crawford and Prof. Suuberg),
others to be involved in the course include Professors Hazeltine and
Briant from the Division of Engineering, and Professor Schlesinger
(Brown's Senior Vice President for Development).
The companies which have tentatively committed to providing projects
include The Foxboro Corporation, Albany International Corporation, and
Comtec Information Systems, Inc. All are located a short drive from
Brown's campus. These companies are internationally recognized leaders
in their respective fields and offer a wide variety of "high-tech"
products. The project ideas that they will share with us will be drawn
from their extensive experience in the world marketplace, but are in an
early stage of development. The project teams will help these companies
decide how to move forward with these ideas.
That's what we are mainly with in this project. Working with people and
IT teams from several Business Schools (Yale University, Stanford
Graduate School of Business, The John E. Anderson School of Management,
UCLA, Harvard Business School, University of Pennsylvania, etc.) we are
delivering the IT side of helping these companies decide how to move
forward with their ideas.
Technology used: Software design and development, Hardware integration,
Multi-user systems setup, Networking and Security, Technical
documentation development, Windows 2000 Server administration, Web and
Multimedia solutions.
Farm to College
This is one of our currently active projects. Brown University has
always bought the food for its students and employees from big
suppliers. As a result the food servers has never been the healthiest
nor the tastiest that could be offered by the University. In its effort
to offer food prepared from organic produce, Brown University has turned
to small local farmers and markets. The Farm to college project is a
project which main goal is to facilitate good, healthy, organic, tasty
local food to find its way to university's dining halls. The aim of this
project is to encourage local food production by forging the link
between local growers and Brown University Dining Services. A direct
purchasing relationship would give the farmer a larger share of the food
dollar (by eliminated transportation costs and middlemen), while the
University will be able to provide students with fresher foods and an
opportunity to participate in and study local agricultural systems.
Reduced food miles would mean reduced fossil fuel use, reduced packaging
and reduced food waste (from spoilage). The Farm to College Project
started as an independent study of Louella Hill, a Brown University
Environment Studies student, and has grown to a large project, funded by
the local and the federal government.
Our role in it - writing the software that will facilitate the local
farmers and Brown University Food Services in their communication,
purchasing, transactions, etc. The software product is still under
development and its main aspects will be an universal, multiplatform and
easily accessible interface for both the farmers and the buyer. The
package will consist of customizable buyer's end and a secure database.
Stand-alone clients will be implemented for users with the most common
operating systems and a web interface with the full capabilities of a
standalone client will be available to offer flexibility in using the
software.
Technology used: Software design, Web design, HTML, DHTML, MySQL, PHP,
JavaScript, Java, VBA.
The Greater Providence Project
This is the fastest growing project that we are involved with. It
started from Ivo's desire to help his friends and acquaintances with
their home computer problems, questions and needs, and it rapidly grew
into a busy activity as the number of people who started calling
increased as a result of the high quality and the speed of his
solutions. Now, there are a group of people, most of them affiliated
with Brown University, who has dedicated some of their busy time to help
people from greater Providence with any computer related problems that
they may have, as well as to provide logic solutions to wide range IT
problems that households, companies, and organizations experience out
there in that imperfect software world. As a result, piskov.net, which
was initially intended to be a small personal website, expanded to meet
the needs of projects like this one and to accommodate future requests
and activities.
Technology used: Microsoft Windows workstation management and server
administration, Cisco network administration, VB, VBA, Java, MySQL, PHP,
C, C++, Networking, Web security, Firewall administration, Software
design, Hardware maintenance, Troubleshooting, Recovery, Installation,
Migration, Upgrade.
piskov.net
When this website appeared, it was meant to be no more than Ivo's
personal page on the Internet. You know, one of those "hi, this is me
and this is my cat. We all live with my uncle..." types. Two things
changed this initial decision - one, the necessity of many people for a
portal to the various resources, services, and information, in which
management he is involved and two, an article that Ivo read once and
which made him realize that a website can really be useful.
Useful in a way that it makes things which a person finds interesting
available to other people. In this way, this person indirectly makes a
statement about him or herself - a statement about what his or her
interests, opinions, skills, personality and values are.
One may ask what would that person gain from making such information
open to the public? Well, just about anything. A website provides access
to an audience, it is a gateway to the world and how this is used is
entirely up to this person. A website cerates demand for a person's
services - something that cannot be expected from a resume alone. While
a resume can contain false information, it is much harder to fool people
with a website. A person can claim to be very organized in his or her
resume, but a website will make the truth self-evident. After all,
someone who wants to evaluate the person through a website can come back
to it in time and see how the site looked after six months or a year. Of
course unorganized and lazy people want to hide these qualities by not
having a website. On the other hand smart individuals are simply
handicapping themselves by not documenting their marketable skills.
Currently piskov.net is a mixture of these two and many other reasons to
exist. It is not there only to provide users with a way to stay in touch
with each other, or to present clients with a gateway to find the
support they are looking for, or to allow us to advertise the skills we
have and the technology we can utilize - it is just all that put
together. After all that said - piskov.net seems like a reasonable
project, doesn't it?
Technology used: Web design, HTML, MySQL, PHP, .NET, JavaScript,
Perl/CGI, XML, Windows 2003 Server Administration, Web security.
Ultimate Network Solutions
Your powerful home or office computer, connected to the Internet, is
only the very tip of the home networking iceberg. Below it, silently
making sure that you have the fastest connection possible is the home
connectivity gear. Having the latest technology available on the market,
reliably wired in a carefully designed and optimized secure network is
becoming increasingly essential for people's homes.
The Ultimate Network Solutions Project helps people unleash the massive
potential that home networking presents. It takes home networking way
beyond simple data-centric tasks like file and printer sharing and
connecting multiple PCs to one broadband connection, and reveals the
ultimate capabilities of the protocols powering today’s home networking
gear (both wire line and wireless) to bring your computer, digital,
audio-video and other equipment to your personal expectations.
With much simpler words - we bring your network to world's top standards
and customize it the way you want. We build it from scratch, repair it,
customize it, secure it, or just improve it. From a small 3 computer
home office setups to a computer controlled digital audio video system
in a 32-bedroom mansion and beyond, we are there to help you. People who
have trusted us, had called us, described their needs and specific
requirements and have always been impressed by our aesthetic solutions,
top-notch technology utilization, and timely deliverance.
Technology used: Our own Ultimate Network Solutions technology
customized to fit your needs.
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