IEEEXtreme 5.0 Judging

Gowtham Prasad, IEEEXtreme 5.0 Project Lead

Gowtham Prasad has 5 years of industry experience and currently works as Developer Evangelist for Microsoft India. In his current role, Gowtham works with top product companies in India to help them adopt, develop and deploy the latest Microsoft Technologies. His technology focus areas are Cloud Computing , Windows Phone 7 and .NET.  Prior to this, he worked as Technical Consultant for North America and UK Microsoft partners . He is a regular speaker at various forums like Microsoft Virtual Tech Days , Community Tech Days and IEEE forums.

In addition to serving as Project Lead for IEEEXtreme 5.0, Gowtham is very active in several communities.  He introduced GINI to Bangalore Section. He is past chair of GOLD Bangalore and Organizer of R10’s 2009 GOLD Congress.  He is the recipient of many awards such as IEEE Asia Pacific (Region10) GOLD Award 2010,  EducConnect Global All Star award from Microsoft,  and Young Innovator Award from TCS, among others. In his free time, Gowtham likes to unwind by listening to music. He loves adventure sports like his recent experiences of Scuba Diving at Bali, rafting in Denver and Sky Diving in San Francisco.


Sinan AlSheikh, IEEEXtreme 5.0 Technical Lead

Sinan AlSheikh has published a number of papers in the area of human computer interaction and natural language processing and is currently working as an IT Consultant with IBM. He filed his first US patent as an undergraduate student and is currently working on his second patent with an IBM colleague. He earned his Master’s degree in Informatics from the British University in Dubai under the supervision of Dr. Khaled Shaalan and his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical engineering from the University of Sharjah. He is now looking forward to pursue his PhD.

In addition to serving as a technical lead for IEEEXtreme5.0, Sinan is an active volunteer for IEEE since 2004. With a record full of awards, he proudly speaks about his winning among 365 other inventors in the "Made in Arab World" Competition. Bungee jumping, Skydiving, Motorcycle crossing and any other adrenaline-driven activity is his part time passion. If you call him an adrenaline junkie will you find him smiling and he will take it as a compliment.

Srinkanta Patanjali, IEEEXtreme 5.0 Technical Lead

Srikanta is working in IBM as an application developer. He recently finished his post graduation from IIIT-Bangalore, India. He has been an IEEE member from past 5 years. He has played an active role in local IEEE activities from the days of his engineering studies and also a co-developer for GINI Collaboration Tool.

Judges are extremely important to the success of the IEEEXtreme 5.0 24-hour programming competition. Without these technical expert volunteers, the competition simply wouldn’t happen. Please join us in recognizing our esteemed judges:
 

Bob Scaccia
President, USA Firmware LLC
Broadview Heights, Ohio USA

Mr. Scaccia has twenty eight years of experience as a firmware architect. In addition to his affiliation as a Group Leader with Firmware Engineers of Northeast Ohio, he has served as IEEE Cleveland Computer Society Chair and IEEE Computer Society Chair.


Dr. Dimitrios P. Lyras
University of Patras
Patras, Greece

Dr. Dimitrios was born in Kozani, Greece and received his diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering (field of expertise: Electric Power Systems) and his Ph.D in Data Mining and Deductive Logic Reasoning from the University of Patras (Greece) in 2006 and 2010, respectively.  He is presently a Research Assistant in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Patras and a Laboratory Associate Professor to the Technological Educational Institute of Patras.  His fields of interest include Machine Learning, Data Mining, Language Modeling, Logical Deduction and Boolean Satisfiability. He has published 12 articles and has participated in 8 European research projects on ICT technologies. Dimitrios speaks fluent English, French, Spanish and Greek, he is a qualified programmer and a judge for IEEEXtreme 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0. 
 

Ken Christensen
Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of South Florida

Ken Christensen is Professor and Director of the Undergraduate Program in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Florida. Ken received the Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University in 1991. His research and teaching interest is in performance evaluation of computer networks with a particular emphasis on power management of networks – “green networks”. Before joining the faculty at USF, Ken was an Advisory Engineer at IBM in the Research Triangle Park. Ken has over 80 journal and conference publications and 13 U.S. patents. Ken is a licensed Professional Engineer in the state of Florida, a member of ACM and ASEE, and a senior member of IEEE.


Oliver Hach
Dr.-Ing., DLR - Aeroelasticity
Göttingen, Germany

Oliver Hach received the Diploma degree in computer engineering from the Technical University, Berlin in 2004, the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bremen in 2009. While his research activities were focused on mobile robotics during the last seven years, he is now with the DLR (German Aerospace Center) working in the aeroelastic simulation department.


George Michael
Special Scientist, University of Cyprus
Palaichori, Cyprus

George received his BSc in Informatics at the University of Cyprus and serves as Region 8’s Electronic Communication Coordinator.
 

Vijay Shankar Krishnamoorthy
Head - Software Engineering , Foundation and Web Technologies
Technology Excellence Group, Tata Consultancy Services
Bangalore, India

Mr. Krishnamoorthy currently heads the Software Engineering and Web Technology Centers of Excellence at Tata Consultancy Services Limited and focuses on fostering technology communities and institutionalizing tools, frameworks, methodologies, standards, best practices, competency development programs and evaluation models in the areas of performance engineering, usability engineering, requirements management, solution design, agile methods, assurance, product quality, web technologies and frameworks, Rich Internet Applications, Java EE technologies, programming languages, and dynamic scripting languages.

In his previous technology leadership roles, Vijay has led the Java and Middleware Technology Practices, and has executed architecture consulting engagements for some of the Fortune 500 customers. Prior to that, Vijay has spent over ten years in conceptualization, engineering and deployment of various Software Products and IT Automation Tools and Architecture Consulting.
His key aspiration is to institutionalize product quality rigor and automation in software engineering.
 

Oded Margalit
Researcher
IBM
Ramat Gan, Israel

Dr. Margalit earned his PhD in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University in 1993 under the supervision of Professor Zvi Galil. He won the IEEE MGA Achievement Award in 2009, is currently working at IBM’s Lab in Haifa on CSP and authoring IBM’s ponder-this monthly challenge site.
 

Adarsh J
Graduate student,
IIT Kanpur,
Kanpur, India