Donald G. Baker

Key Accomplishments

Designed & developed product involving network fault correlation in military networks for five-year $20M complex government project. Implemented system, enabling new capabilities lacking in similar systems.
Articulated solution utilizing variant of Boolean Satisfiability that represents space of possible solutions, enumerated as needed to represent complete set of scenarios, explaining observations derived from network.
Lead designer/developer for a two-company team securing $2.4M in government funding by proposing video surveillance architecture enabling users to take advantage of recent technological developments.
Co-developed government system to aid collaboration within intelligence community following 9/11 attacks on $4.8M contract for Awareness Enabled Coordination System.
Conceptualized and developed software for key solutions including continuous process refinement, permitting running process to be modified as executed; recontextualization, to re-cast information useful in one environment to that which user is operating; and awareness, targeting information provided to users based on situational needs, resulting in four publications and solidifying company as industry leader.
Developed technology, based on Collaboration Management Infrastructure (CMI), to establish a lightweight platform for provisioning services, resulting in a cost effective and affordable solution for cable companies.
Participated on team in complex standardization effort (IEEE 802.21) for protocols regarding telephony service standards by experimenting on proposed changes and working closely with partners on shared goals. Implemented prototype software/test bed to confirm feature functionality in new revisions and validate standards.
Designed, developed and implemented advanced Java-based workflow system components, including process design tools, model representation, data flow, basic activity execution, and monitoring ultimately publishing over ten peer-reviewed papers and technical reports.
Rerchitected, maintained, and extended the Swarm object-based storage system. Managed a small team over several years through over a dozen software releases.

Career History

and Selected Notable Achievements

Caringo, Austin, Texas

Senior Software Designer (2010 - 2015). Director of Engineering, Swarm Storage (2015 - 2021)

Led the team that maintained, extended the product through over a dozen releases.
Primary developer on a product rearchitecture enabling better scale maintainablity. Other significant projects include remote replication, backup to S3, porting to python3, and object versioning.
Actively work with QA and support to address customer impacting issues and maintaining exemplary product quality, leading to high customer trust and loyalty.

Telcordia Technologies Austin Research Center, Austin, Texas

Senior Research Scientist (2000 - 2009)

Designed & developed product involving network fault correlation in military networks for five-year $20M complex government project. Implemented system, enabling new capabilities lacking in similar systems.
Articulated solution utilizing variant of Boolean Satisfiability that represents space of possible solutions, enumerated as needed to represent complete set of scenarios, explaining observations derived from network.
Originated mechanism to address main practical weakness by enabling solution to be widely distributed with multiple Network Management Systems, dividing responsibility, and sharing minimal amount of information to arrive at optimal result.
Created generalized system allowing for reuse in other government contracts, resulting in significant cost savings. Published two papers and received U.S. patent for "Computing Diagnostic Explanations of Network Faults from Monitoring Data."
Lead designer/developer for a two-company team securing $2.4M in government funding by proposing video surveillance architecture enabling users to take advantage of recent technological developments.
Built novel, data driven video surveillance architecture with 185 Java classes, immediately reflecting new or changed information in results. System employed revolutionary capabilities including mechanisms to actively acquire information and had significant end-user customization capabilities.
Integrated camera feeds and other sensors as part of a video surveillance system to create historical pictures of facility in near real time to evaluate and enforce complex security and safety policies.
Coordinated on-the-road demonstration using "tape recorder" mechanism to play metadata from six videos, ultimately garnering a flurry of commercial interest and increasing profitability.
Administered contract with international government customer initiating partnership to bring customer's deliverables up to par for integration while exercising clause to protect company from customer's nonfeasance.
Brought international government contract to fruition, protecting company's interests by adhering to provisions within contract, earning repeat business for profitable follow-up project.
Co-developed government system to aid collaboration within intelligence community following 9/11 attacks on $4.8M contract for Awareness Enabled Coordination System.
Conceptualized and developed software for key solutions including continuous process refinement, permitting running process to be modified as executed; recontextualization, to re-cast information useful in one environment to that which user is operating; and awareness, targeting information provided to users based on situational needs, resulting in four publications and solidifying company as industry leader.
Produced system enabling intelligence organizations to set coordination policies/constraints based on laws and best practices, providing end user's the flexibility to make time sensitive decisions based on contextualized information & awareness, aiding in intelligence sharing heavily laden with rules, regulations and crisis management.
Constructed systems containing "awareness" component providing targeted information to users based on situational needs. Realized commonality and abstracted lessons in published work, providing blueprint for building class of technology.
Participated on team in complex standardization effort (IEEE 802.21) for protocols regarding telephony service standards by experimenting on proposed changes and working closely with partners on shared goals. Implemented prototype software/test bed to confirm feature functionality in new revisions and validate standards.
Developed technology, based on Collaboration Management Infrastructure (CMI), to establish a lightweight platform for provisioning services, resulting in a cost effective and affordable solution for cable companies.
Constructed automated phone system called interactive voice response (IVR) to gather information from callers, initiating actions on their behalf, demonstrating marketability of underlying technologies owned by company.
Worked collaboratively with internal customer to gain considerable knowledge regarding strengths and limitations of infrastructure and studied its various uses in past resolutions, proposing multiple non-trivial changes to increase ease and efficiency when developing solutions.

The University of Texas, Austin, Texas

Adjunct Assistant Professor (2001-2003)

Educated undergraduates in theoretical computer science, presenting material in an effective manner and mentoring struggling/borderline seniors.
Utilized enthusiasm for material to teach course, bringing industry perspective to lectures, while emphasizing life-skills such as critical thinking, argumentation, and design.
Connected students' current study to real-world applications, using assignments and linking coursework to previous/future study in related disciplines.
Demonstrated consistency and fairness in preparation and grading of exams, providing timely feedback to students.

MCC, Austin, Texas

Researcher (1998-2000)

Collaborated with team to develop event-processing technology for government contract with mandate to use technology in emerging advanced workflow system making effective use of its capabilities.
Combined technologies to leverage meaning of workflow and target roles of users during delivery, permitting awareness provisioning to emerge and benefiting government customers by initiating guides to use general event processing technology effectively.
Implemented large fraction of challenging advanced workflow system involving three sponsoring companies, including process design tools, model representation, data flow, basic activity execution, and awareness component, ultimately publishing over ten peer-reviewed papers and technical reports based on implementation.
Completed "at risk" contract for key customer by collaborating with upper management and customer, establishing a workable solution in timely fashion, delighting customer with extra effort and securing government advocate.

Publications

Electronic copies are available upon request.

Marian Nodine, Donald Baker, Ritu Chadha, Jason Chiang, Kimberly Moeltner, Thomas D'Silva, Yogeeta Kumar, "Issues with and Approaches to Network Monitoring and Problem Remediation in Military Tactical Networks," MILCOM 2009.
Miriam Tauil, Ashutosh Dutta, Yuu-Heng Cheng, Subir Das, Donald Baker, Maya Yajnik, David Famolari, Yoshihiro Ohba, Kenichi Taniuchi, Victor Fajardo, and Henning Schulzrinne, "Integration of IEEE 802.21 Services and Pre-authentication Framework," International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, 5(1/2), 2010.
Miriam Tauil, Ashutosh Dutta, Kenichi Taniuchi, Yuu-Heng Cheng, Subir Das, Donald Baker, Maya Yajnik, David Famolari, Yoshihiro Ohba, and Victor Fajardo, "Realization of IEEE 802.21 Services and Preauthentication Framework," 5th International Conference on Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks and Communities (TRIDENTCOM 2009), April 6-8, 2009, Washington DC.
Kenichi Taniuchi, Yoshihiro Ohba, Victor Fajardo, Subir Das, Miriam Tauil, Yuu-Heng Cheng, Ashutosh Dutta, Donald Baker, Maya Yajnik, and David Famolari, "IEEE 802.21: Media Independent Handover - Features, Applicability, and Realization," IEEE Communications, 47(1), January, 2009.
Donald Baker, Marian Nodine, Ritu Chadha, C. Jason Chiang, Yitzchak Gottlieb, C.-P. Flossie Hsu, Robert Jaeger, Gary Levin, and Yibei Ling, "Computing Diagnostic Explanations of Network Faults from Monitoring Data," MILCOM 2008, November 17-29, 2008, San Diego California.
Donald Baker, Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Marian Nodine, and Andrzej Cichocki, "Requirements in Providing Awareness from Events," Position paper for the Event Based Semantics Workshop held in conjunction with the 13th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS 2007), April 3, 2007.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Donald Baker, Marian Nodine, Andrzej Cichocki, "Event-Driven Video Awareness Providing Physical Security," World Wide Web Journal, 10(1), Springer, 2007.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos and Donald Baker, "The Video Event Awareness System," International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE 2007), Istanbul Turkey, April 2007.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Marian Nodine, Donald Baker, Andrzej Cichocki, "Awareness-based Collaboration Driving Process-based Coordination," the Second International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications, and Worksharing, (CollaborateCom 2006), Atlanta Georgia, November 2006.
Donald Baker, Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Marian Nodine, and Andrzej Cichocki, "From Events to Awareness," First International Workshop on Event-driven Architecture, Processing, and Systems (EDA-PS'06) ICWS 2006 / SSCS 2006, Chicago Ill., September 2006.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos and Donald Baker, "Providing Physical Security via Video Event Awareness," International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications (SIGMAP 2006), Setúbal Portugal, August 2006.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Marian Nodine, Donald Baker, and Andrzej Cichocki, "Awareness-Enabled Coordination for Large Scale Collaboration Management," 2006 International Symposium on Collaborative Technologies and Systems (CTS 2006), Las Vegas Nevada, May 2006.
Marian Nodine, Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Don Baker, Andrzej Cichocki, Shilpa Bondale, "Agent-Based Coordination and Coordination Policies in Organizational Settings," in Proceedings of the International Workshop on Organizations in Multi-Agent Systems (OOOP '05), July, 2005, Utrecht, NL. (in conjunction with AAMAS '05).
Donald Baker, Andrzej Cichocki, Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Marian Nodine, "Awareness-Enabled Coordination," in Proceedings of the IEEE/IPSJ International Symposium on Applications and the Internet (SAINT 2005) Teamware Workshop, 31 January - 4 February, 2005, Trento, Italy.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Hans Schuster, Andrzej Cichocki, and Donald Baker, "Process-based E-service Composition for Modeling and Automating Zero Latency Supply Chains," Information System Frontiers Journal, 4(1), Kluwer, April 2002.
Anne H. H. Ngu, Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Donald Baker, and Andrzej Cichocki, Joseph Desmarais, Peter Bates, "Advanced Process-based Component Integration in Telcordia Cable OSS," Demo paper, 18th International Conference on Data Engineering, March 2002.
Donald Baker, Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Hans Schuster, and Andrzej Cichocki, "Customized Process and Situation Awareness," Cooperative Information Systems, M. Papazoglou and G. Schlageter, (Eds.), World Scientific, 11(3 & 4), March 2002.
Hans Schuster, Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Andrzej Cichocki, and Donald Baker, "Modeling and Composing Service-based and Reference Process-based Multi-enterprise Processes," Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, Stockholm, Sweden, June 2000.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Andrzej Cichocki, Hans Schuster, and Donald Baker, "Process-based Service Integration for Zero Latency Supply Chains in Virtual Enterprises," Proceedings of the International Working Conference and Industrial Expo on New Advances and Emerging Trends In Next Generation Enterprises, Buffalo, New York, April 2000.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Hans Schuster, Donald Baker, and Andrzej Cichocki, "Managing Escalation of Collaboration Processes in Crisis Mitigation Situations," Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Data Engineering, San Diego, March 2000.
Hans Schuster, Donald Baker, Andrzej Cichocki, Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, and Marek Rusinkiewicz, "The Collaboration Management Infrastructure," (demo paper), Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Data Engineering, San Diego, March 2000.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Hans Schuster, Andrzej Cichocki, and Donald Baker, "Managing Process and Service Fusion in Virtual Enterprises," Information Systems, 24(6), Pergamon, September 1999.
Donald Baker, Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Hans Schuster, Anthony Cassandra, and Andrzej Cichocki, "Providing Customized Process and Situation Awareness in the Collaboration Management Infrastructure," Proceedings of the Fourth IFCIS Conference on Cooperative Information Systems, Edinburgh, Scotland, September 1999.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Andrzej Cichocki, Hans Schuster, and Donald Baker, "Modeling and Composing Service-based and Reference Process-based Multi-enterprise Processes," MCC Technical Report MCC-SRI-092-99, November 1999.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Hans Schuster, Andrzej Cichocki, and Donald Baker, "Managing Process and Service Fusion in Virtual Enterprises," MCC Technical Report CMI-015-99 (Revised), September 1999.
Donald Baker, Anthony R. Cassandra, and Mosfeq Rashid, "CEDMOS: Complex Event Detection and Monitoring System," MCC Technical Report CEDMOS-002-99, March 1999.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Hans Schuster, Andrzej Cichocki, and Donald Baker, "Collaboration Management Infrastructure in Crisis Response Situations," MCC Technical Report CMI-009-99, March 1999.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Hans Schuster, Andrzej Cichocki, and Donald Baker, "CMM: A Collaboration Management Model For Coordination, Awareness, and Services," MCC Technical Report CMI-118-98 (P), March 1999.
Mosfeq Rashid, Anthony Cassandra, and Donald Baker, "CEDMOS Event Specification," MCC Technical Report CMI-035-98 (P), April 1998.
Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Hans Schuster, Donald Baker, and Andrzej Cichocki, "Technology and Tools for Collaboration Management," MCC Technical Report CMI-032-98 (P), April 1998.
Donald G. Baker, "Memento: A Collaborative, Semantic-Based Infrastructure for Building Assistants," Ph.D. Dissertation, Rice University, 1997. Available as Rice University Computer Science Technical Report TR98-304, March 1998 via http://cohesion.rice.edu/engineering/computerscience/tr/Index.cfm.
Donald G. Baker, Jerry Fowler, G. Anthony Gorry, "The Memento Collaboration Infrastructure," Technical Report CTTL-96-1, Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning, Rice University, 1996.
Vram Kouramajian, Ross Dargahi, Donald Baker, and Jerry Fowler, "Consortium: A Framework for Transactions in Collaborative Environments," Fourth International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM '95), December 1995.
Jerry Fowler, Donald Baker, Vram Kouramajian, Hillary Gilson, Ross Dargahi, and Kevin Brook Long, "Experience with the Virtual Notebook System: Abstraction in Hypertext," Proceedings of the 1994 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW '94), October 1994.
Douglas B. Terry, and Donald G. Baker, "Active Tioga Documents: An Exploration of Two Paradigms," Electronic Publishing, 3(2), May 1990.

Recommendations

"Don was a close and trusted collaborator during the eleven years we both worked for MCC and Telcordia. He was a significant contributor in the development of the Collaboration Management Infrastructure/ATLAS, the most advanced workflow management system of its time. He was a major contributor in the the development of Telcordia's Cable OSS, the first operation support system for provisioning tripple play services over cable. He lead the development of the Awareness Enabled Coordination system, a unique platform for supporting the coordination of very lage teams on complex application specific tasks. Don was also the main Architect of the Video Event Awareness Workbench, a disruptive technology that is capable of processing video streams from thousands of cameras and other sensors to detect complex security events and generate targeted alerts with video evidence. I will gladly collaborate with Don again."

D. Georgakopoulos via LinkedIn

"I had the pleasure of working with Don both at MCC and at Telcordia, for a total of nine years. Don has the wonderful combination of being intelligent, creative, and disciplined in his work. He is also a really good listener and team player. Most recently, I worked with Don on network fault and performance correlation in wireless networks. This was a new area for Don, yet he came up to speed quickly and developed innovative techniques to address some of the harder problems we were facing. Previously, Don and I also worked closely on a system to support collaborative processes that encompassed both human and automated activities. He was a key innovator and developer in this project as well. My work association with Don has been uniformly both pleasant and productive."

M. Nodine via LinkedIn

"Working with Don over several years (both in Telcordia and in MCC) allowed me to appreciate the value of team members like him: intelligent, innovative, and hard working. Don is an excellent researcher, has a great grasp on technology, and his experience allows him to quickly translate his ideas into working systems. I strongly recommend Don, and I will always welcome an opportunity to work with him again."

A. Cichocki via LinkedIn

"I had the privilege to work with Don in one project for more than a year with a very good impression. Though the physical distance was about 1,725 miles away, the interaction was as if we were working in the same town. It was the first time I agree that telecommuting is possible. Different from most telecommuters, Don was very proactive and sincere. Our team members were able to receive help from him throughout the project lifespan. He was a key contributor to the completion. Don is strong in computing technologies and humble in work place communication. He is very reliable and trust worthy. Because of his technical excellencies, Don provides creative ideas and directions to give an extra touch for the quality of our prototype developments. I look forward to working with him again."

A. Cheng via LinkedIn

Programming Languages:	Python, Java, C, C++
Web Technologies:	S3, HTTP, HTML, JSON, XML
Database Technologies:	SQL, Oracle, MySQL, JDBC
Network Technologies:	TCP/IP, Sockets, SNMP
Integrated Development:	Eclipse, Microsoft Visual Studio
Source Control:	Git, SVN, CVS

Senior Software Developer