Long things short
I was born in the mid-eighties in the French-speaking part of Belgium, got a Master in Computer Science with honors in 2007 (actually, it was a license, but the named switched since then without much change in the actual program). I then worked for two years as a teaching assistant and researcher at the EECS department of the University of Liège.
Professional experience
- 2005-2006: Moniteur Pisart at University of Liège. This work as a student consists in helping first years understand their first algorithmics course during labs and exercises sessions.
- 2007-2009: Teaching assistant and researcher at University of Liège.
- Working on Grid computing software and publications, in continuation of my licence/master thesis and together with a colleague who was finishing his own PhD thesis.
- Includes the same responsibilities as former position, plus managing the team of Pisart assistants, answering more precise questions from the students and correcting part of the exams.
- System administration of the computer lab (about 55 computers running a replicated Ubuntu LTS that I installed in 2007). I installed a monitoring system (Nagios) and rewrote much of the scripts for student-related operations.
- System administration of a small applicative server, including initial installation and management of the new source control and bug tracking system.
- Trying to get some nodes up for the Belgian research grid (gLite on Scientific Linux on a QEMU virtual machine running on Debian or Ubuntu).
- Attended several seminars and discussions on teaching, organized by the University.
- Co-advisor for a master thesis
Technical abilities
I have a good knowledge of Java (both from my studies and later work) and PHP (from personal work) and (X)HTML/CSS. I was never limited by knowledge of Javascript but hardly wrote more than a few hundred lines of code. I also have a reasonable experience with C (for projects of a few thousand lines).
I regularly use Linux boxes (mainly Debian or Debian-based) for tasks beyond classic desktop tasks and feel comfortable with Shell scripting.
Work on my licence/master thesis gave me a good understanding of BitTorrent, and how to use it in an independent application without user interaction.
During my studies or free time, I also got to work in C++ and Perl but I don't have the same experience with those languages as I have with Java and PHP (in other words, I could certainly work on a project, but it would require some adaptation).
Interests
- The Web. From a rough (i.e. what you would expect from a master in CS) understanding of low-level technologies to higher-level things like PHP frameworks. If it's running on the Internet, chances are I have at least a marginal interest in it. Obviously, I'm also interested in anything that's Web 2.0, but I like to think of the Web as a constantly evolving media, not as something that can be versionned.
- Grid computing. I first learned about the Grid when doing my licence/master thesis. Since then, I kept on working on the topic.
- Linux systems (mainly Debian).
- Programming in general.
Trivial interests
Like everyone else, I also have a life besides work. I like books, comics, music, movies and video games (though I hardly have/take time to play anymore). That's about what I have to say on a public website.
