Kenneth Knowles

Engineer and Computer Scientist

Profile

Experienced mobile and cloud engineer.
Academic expert in logic and programming languages.
Effective and organized project manager.

Technical

  • Python
  • Perl
  • PHP
  • SQL
  • NoSQL
  • Java
  • C/C++
  • Objective C
  • Javascript
  • iOS
  • Haskell
  • Scala
  • OCaml
  • Coq
  • Isabelle/HOL

Professional

Inkling

Platform Engineer

2010 - present

Leading the analytics team - including expertise in design, business intelligence, web programming, and data warehousing. Maintaining the backend REST API to support the Inkling iPad app. Creating and maintaining authoring tools and automation systems to support the editorial staff. Contributing to the design of Inkling's S9ML format for learning content.

Sugarcube

iPhone Application Engineer

2009 - 2010

Developed polished iPhone apps for Fortune 500 brands featured in Apple commercials and stores, including Gap Stylemixer, Timberline, Cooks Illustrated, and Panelfly. Wrote middleware and integrated this and the iPhone apps with backends of Facebook, Twitter, Shopstyle, and Cooks Illustrated.

University of California - Santa Cruz

Research and Teaching Assistant

2004 - 2009

As a Ph.D. candidate, performed programming language research independently and collaboratively, publishing in respected peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. Delivered supplementary lectures, led discussion sections, provided one-on-one tutoring. See also selected publications below.

Cityspan Technologies

Senior Programmer

2000 - 2004

Led the development team for Cityspan's web information management system, encompassing the needs of various governments, nonprofits, and research institutions. Designed and implemented: a flexible relational metamodel encompassing the needs of all clients, a language for nontechnical personnel to customize the product, an early AJAX-accelerated user interface, and a query and reporting system for the metamodel.

University of California - Berkeley

Research Assistant

2003 - 2004

Under professor Brian Harvey, added object-oriented features to the UC Berkeley Logo implementation. Under research director Adrian Freed of the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, prototyped a C++/OpenGL interface for the Open Sound World visual programming language. Under graduate student researcher Ravi Kolluri, implemented and benchmarked heuristic optimizations to algorithms for reconstruction of solid models from 3-D laser scanner data.

Education

University of California - Santa Cruz

Master of Science in Computer Science (Ph.D. Candidate)

Emphasized programming languages, especially type systems and parallel functional programming.
Founder of UCSC's weekly programing language reading group for classic papers and ongoing research.
Co-founder of The "What Is ... ?" Graduate Seminar at UCSC, a voluntary cross-disciplinary seminar on math and science topics.
Four-time recipient of the UC Regents' Fellowship.
See also selected publications below.

University of Oregon

Graduate summer schools on programming languages

2008 Summer School on Logic and Theorem Proving in Programming Languages.
2007 Summer School on Language-Based Techniques for Integrating with the External World.
2006 Summer School on Language-Based Techiques for Concurrent and Distributed Systems.

University of California - Berkeley

Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Emphasized computer science theory. Recipient of the National Merit Scholarship.

Selected Publications

Hybrid Type Checking. (pdf)

With Cormac Flanagan. In Transaction on Programming Languages and Systems, 2010 (TOPLAS'10).

Compositional and Decidable Checking for Dependent Contract Types. (pdf)

With Cormac Flanagan. In Proceedings of Programming Languages meets Program Verification, 2009 (PLPV'09).

Proving correctness of a dynamic atomicity analysis in Coq. (abstract)

With Caitlin Sadowski, Jaeheon Yi, and Cormac Flanagan. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Mechanizing Metatheory, 2008 (WMM'08).

First-Order Logic A la Carte. (pdf)

In The Monad Reader Issue 11, 2008.

Type Reconstruction for General Refinement Types. (pdf) (extended)

With Cormac Flanagan. In Proceedings of the European Symposium on Programming, 2007 (ESOP'07).

Sage: Hybrid Checking for Expressive Specifications. (pdf) (extended)

With Jessica Gronski, Aaron Tomb, Cormac Flanagan, and Stephen Freund. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Scheme and Functional Programming, 2006 (SFP'06).

Selected Projects

Parallel SAT Algorithm Comparison

Spring 2007

Experimentally compared parallelization strategies for boolean 3-SAT using advanced constructs available in the Haskell programming language. (For a Ph.D. course in parallel programming techniques at UC Santa Cruz)

Row Type Inference

Spring 2005

Implemented row-polymorphic type reconstruction for a lambda calculus with row types for extensible records and variants (For a Ph.D. course in type systems at UC Santa Cruz)

Failure Detector Comparison

Spring 2005

Wrote a multithreaded network simulator in Objective Caml and compared various algorithms for failure detection in distributed systems. (For a master-level course in distributed systems at UC Santa Cruz)

Senate Vote Prediction

Fall 2004

Applied machine learning algorithms to the problem of predicting senators’ votes on a new bill, using a feature set drawn from the text of senate bills, and the senators’ past votes. (For a master-level course in machine learning at UC Santa Cruz)

Markov Chain Music

Spring 2003

Experimented with generation of music using Markov chains and higher-order functions in Objective Caml. (For a Ph.D. seminar in computer music at UC Berkeley)

Survey of Set-Based Analysis

Fall 2003

Presented a survey of set-based analysis for a an audience in computer science, but not necessarily expert in programming languages. (For a master-level course in programming languages at UC Berkeley)

Survey of Proof-Carrying Code

Fall 2002

Presented a survey of proof-carrying code research for an audience of scientists, but not necessarily computer scientists. (For an undergraduate technical writing course at UC Berkeley)

Selected Awards

Regents Fellowship

Funded graduate research for: Fall 2004, Winder 2007, Spring 2007, and Spring 2009.

National Merit Scholarship

Recipient of UC Berkeley National Merit Scholarship throughout undergraduate career.

Radioshack/Tandy Corp. Award

Selected by San Ramon Valley High School faculty as top mathematics student in graduating class.

Misc Interests

Music

Co-created, arranged, performed, and produced five studio albums. Co-arranged, produced, and conducted synthesized accompaniment to community West Side Story production. Co-created, arranged, promoted, and ran all-day, two-stage music festival.

Go

Co-founder of UC Santa Cruz Chess and Go Players. Rated 5 kyu by Nihon Ki-in.

Kenneth Knowles — kenn.knowles@gmail.com