Gedalia Pasternak's Resume

		Gedalia Pasternak e-mail: gedalia at gmail dot com Portfolio
OBJECTIVE		Software Engineer Specializing in 3D Computer Graphics and Animation with 14+ years of industry experiance
EXPERIENCE
December '02 - Present		Boston Dynamics Lead Engineer / Senior Engineer / Software Engineer Lead Engineer on DI-Guy - a C++ based character animation SDK and Scenario creation tool, an industry standard in the visual simulation market. Responsible for many different core systems including the art pipeline from 3DS Max/ZBrush, OpenGL rendering engine, UI tool design, AI multi-agent crowd infrastructure, and optimizing everything from rendering bottlenecks to CPU usage to memory usage. Work on core engine including collision detection code, culling code, particle systems, lighting/shadows, shader framework development, OpenAL sound system, DIS/HLA networking module, customer facing API for using other rendering engines. Product eventually supported skinned normal mapped characters including facial animation. Responsible for much of DI-Guy AI - including a 2.5D terrain/navigation mesh painting tool and multithreaded A* path planner, and creating simple autonomous behaviors. Authored a Lua based hierarchal finite state machine infrastructure for controlling agents, including a tight Lua/C++ engine integration framework, fully featured code editor with autocomplete, and interactive debugger. Wrote sample AI's that were used for pattern of life background agents for a number of customers. Organizational tasks included mentoring junior engineers, design reviews, product visioning and planning. Participated in customer support calls, traveling with the sales team to customers and sales demos, attending I/ITSEC trade show for many years and staffing booth. Technical lead on a multi-million dollar Tactical Training System for the US Marine Core, project used in a number of training exercises around the core. System featured hundreds of background agents, a framework that supported a dozen different squad types, traveling and maneuvering around an environment. Technical lead for a Use-of-Force Trainer, designing infrastructure to interface with an infrared camera and a gun fitted with a laser. Result similar to "Duck Hunt" with a 9mm and a taser. System was eventually deployed by FLETC. Initially worked ('02-03) on Digital Biomechanics -- a high accuracy physics simulation tool used for developing robotic control systems and evaluating equipment designs. Responsible for identifying bottlenecks and optimizing the simulation engine with vTune, as well as stabilizing a multi-threaded multi-process communication framework. Worked on Matlab plotting tools and made improvements to 3D data visualization functionality.
2009 - Present		Independent iOS Development Author of iBeams, iBeams HD, Gravilocity and Photastic, interactive graphics toys and music visualizers for the iPhone and iPad. See Demos
February '01 - July '02		Turbine Entertainment Software Graphics Engineer One of the developers of client technology of Asheron's Call 2, a Massively Multiplayer game published by Microsoft. Responsible for a number of core systems, including the character animation system, player controls and physics, the camera system, and parts of the special effects system. Worked closely with the game system team to develop the interfaces that allowed them to control the animation and camera system for flexible presentation to end-user. Built tools and file formats that allowed the technical artists to get dozens of creatures up and running efficiently. Added numerous features to client-server character synchronization code, appearance system, landscape engine, and physics engine. Developed system to automatically document Turbine's multimillion-line multi-language code base with Doxygen.
July '00 - November '00		Improv Technologies Game Developer Worked on Catalyst Game Development Kit. Technical tasks included writing data exporters for 3D Studio Max and Maya, exporters included mesh representation, skeletal animation and morphing animation data. Also worked with artists to refine the content pipeline for demos, and assisted marketing with marketing message and Evaluation Procedure.
March '99 - June '00		Altiverse Systems Software Architect / Vice President of whatever falls on the floor. Led a small R&D team for a startup developing a large scale distributed real-time 3D platform. From the initial brainstorming sessions, wrote majority of a sixty page Product Specification. For Technical Specifications, assessed existing software tools and technologies, as well as did high level design of new technologies. Wrote prototype code, most notably the design and implementation of a real-time facial animation system based on a physical muscle model of the face, eventually opened sourced and published as Expression. Design tasks included using 3D Studio Max to build proof-of-concept animation pieces to demonstrate potential interaction features and user interface elements. Also contributed to the company's business plan and long term strategic planning, and conducted market research. Wrote job descriptions and task lists. Evaluated potential employees, specifically artists and programmers.
June '98 - March '99		R /Greenberg Associates Freelance Technical Director/Programmer Projects included a promotional piece for Disney Cruise Lines and two commercials for Pontiac. On Disney I was responsible for coding the look and motion of particle systems, simulating various elements including pixie dust, shooting stars and a particle logo treatment with R/GA's proprietary renderer. On Pontiac built a photorealistic compact disc, which included coding a procedural shader that simulated the anisotropic rainbow reflections on its surface, in Softimage (C and Mental Ray API). Also assisted with compositioning in Eddie, as well as modeling.
Summer '97		Studio Archetype (merged with Sapient) Summer Intern Developed applications for the IBM web site; projects included an interactive Java version of the IBM Home page with a dynamically generated hierarchical menu system well as a web based rendering engine and image composition package written in C++ and using OpenGL.
EDUCATION		The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art Bachelor of Science in Engineering, May 98 Concentration in Computer Science and Mathematics, Dean's List
COURSE WORK
		Computer Science/Engineering: Data Structures, Compiler Design, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Computer Vision, Interactive 3D Graphics, Circuits, Digital Logic Design, Computer Architecture. Math: Calculus 1,2,3, Probability, Analytic Geometry, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, Discrete Math, Numerical Analysis Physics: Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, Optics and Modern, General Relativity Design/Graphics: Intro to 3D design, Guided Design, Drawing I.
Volunteering/Leadership
		Webmaster for Temple Beth Shalom of Cambridge synagogue. Member of the Board Of Directors Temple Beth Shalom of Cambridge '06-'12 Cofounder Boston Jewish Outdoors Club a 300+ member group, helped organize and lead a large number of events from 2004-.
KEY SKILLS
		Computer programming, hardware, ability to work in a team environment, 2D and 3D visualization problems, image processing, 3D math, linear algebra, aesthetic sensibility.
COMPUTER SKILLS
PROGRAMMING		C/C++: Commercial projects: DI-Guy, Asheron's Call 2 - a massively multiplayer online game, Expression - a real-time facial animation system, a 2D image compositor,
SOFTWARE		After Effects, CodeWarrior, Eddie, Finale, Freehand, Frontpage, MS Office, Pagemaker, Photoshop, Softimage, 3D Studio Max, Visual Studio
RECENT HONORS
		Four Year Full Tuition Scholarship to the Cooper Union National Dean's List
ACTIVITIES		Drawing, Sculpting, Philolexian Debating Society, Rollerblading, Photography
REFERENCES		Available upon request.

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