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Stephen Pasco and

11.22.04 -- Stephen Pasco and Massimiliano "Max" Menarini have joined Ingolf Krueger to form a core Software and Systems Architecture and Integration team at the UCSD division of Calit². In this capacity, Pasco and Menarini will address architecture and software integration needs across a range of technology and applications research projects.

Massimiliano "Max" Menarini

Krueger is a Research Scientist with the institute and an Assistant Professor in Residence in UCSD's Computer Science and Engineering department. The team he is building will offer services including software architecture modeling, design, implementation, deployment, and evaluation; software architecture-related research, project planning and estimation, requirements analysis and documentation, and risk assessment and management; technology scouting; and proposal support.

These services will be available to all Calit² projects that have software and systems architecture and integration needs.

Notes UCSD division director Ramesh Rao, "I envision this area will become one of our key functional areas to serve a range of active projects as we move forward to occupying our new building in the spring."

"We are delighted to have Stephen and Max as founding members of this team," says Krueger, who will direct this functional area. "Today's information systems are highly distributed and reactive. Often they emerge as 'systems of systems' by integrating multiple sub-systems connected via a wide range of networking technologies. Typically, these systems are embedded within technical or business systems and processes."

Stephen Pasco

Krueger says that sensor networks and enterprise-wide business systems are examples from both ends of the spectrum. Indeed, the convergence of technical and business systems, with corresponding development techniques and tools, represents a major challenge to interdisciplinary research and applications development. Successful design of architectures for such 'systems of systems' will lay the foundation for system development and integration at Calit². Such design requires a variety of technical skills as well as an understanding of the pertinent application domains.

Stephen Pasco, who joined Calit² on October 1st, brings a wide-ranging background to his new assignment with broad-based software development experience working for various companies. He began his career doing network administration and junior programming on small interdepartmental applications at San Jose State University where he wrote a weather-tracking system that was deployed in elementary and high schools throughout Silicon Valley. "We installed weather apparatus on rooftops," says Pasco. "The equipment measured weather data - temperature, rainfall, wind direction and speed, and humidity. We did this in conjunction with Channel 11, KNTV in San Jose, which brought the project lots of attention."

He also worked for Galatia, a consulting company in Silicon Valley, working with dot-com companies and financial institutions, then became director of software development for Inet Events in Los Angeles, where he developed an event-management system for the convention business. Following that, he became a senior software engineer for FirstLook.com, a streaming video/movie/entertainment portal. "Just as their name indicates, when new music or videos came out, you could get a first look at them through this portal," he says.

Pasco has also worked as an independent consultant for USA Networks, Sun Microsystems, and whatshotnow.com.

Most recently, Pasco was a senior software engineer with the Walt Disney Internet Group, where he oversaw and delivered software architecture analysis and design, and worked on data and application integration projects for Disney's websites, including the Disney ticket store.

At Calit², Pasco is interested in working with computer engineers, specifically integrating software applications he develops with hardware platforms, such as sensor devices. "What appeals to me about Calit² is the combination of research plus deployment," he says.

Max Menarini joined Calit² in late August after earlier receiving a Laurea degree in Informatics Engineering with a specialization in Systems and Computer Applications from the University of Bologna, Italy.

Before graduation, Menarini taught Java and Web programming. He also worked as consultant for a couple of small Internet production companies producing websites and programming e-commerce applications.

Menarini has continued his education at UCSD in software architecture and reliability methods, developing an expertise in domain modeling and software architecture specifications. He hopes to enter the Ph.D. program formally in Computer Science and Engineering next fall.

As part of Calit², he expects to contribute to the creation of templates for defining software architecture documents. "Studying software engineering and related processes enables you to see how theory gets applied in the real world," he says. "If you apply theory to a real design and development project, you can validate that theory and develop ideas for future research."

According to Menarini, Calit² provides a real-world perspective and test environment for academic projects "Most student projects are small - I call them 'lab projects'- and they might work for a small group of people," the Italian-born engineer explains. "But the real question is: Do they scale? That is, can the theory be scaled to a much larger testbed?" It's not surprising, then, to learn that Menarini's primary research interest is formal methods for software verification.