Welcome to the Home Page of David Alan Zook

INTERESTS
My current interests are in:

Software Engineering (as in, "There's GOT to be a better way to do this...")
Visualization (as in, "Hey, maybe THIS might help)
Theory (as in, "What do you mean: that can't be done?")

BIOGRAPHY

I am a new PhD student at Georgia Tech and very excited to be here. I am probably in the small end of the Bell Curve wrt age and experience, because I have my MS from Johns Hopkins and have been doing software engineering for the last decade (or so). My undergraduate degree was in Mathematics, but I promptly left college and got a computer job, which I have done ever since. Although I am basically American, I was actually born in Zimbabwe and came to the US when I was 10 years old (I won't say how long ago that was). So, I have something I can blame my my weirdnesses on. After growing up in central PA, I moved to Boston to work for six years, and then to Baltimore, to work and get my MS degree. I have been involved in several start-up companies, and have seen various degrees of success, ranging from 1) downright failure, to 2) we'll just hobble along forever, to 3) making a zillion bucks! (just kidding - I never saw this one).

COURSES

Spring 2000 (in progress)

Special Topics w/ Spencer Rugaber: Domain Knowledge and Software Engineering

Special Topics w/ John Stasko: Visualization for Software Engineering

Computational Complexity

Fall 1999

Introduction to Graduate Studies (CS7001)
My three mini-projects were:

Teaching Kids to Program - Amy Bruckner resulting in my MOOSE Crossing paper
Transformational Abstraction for Java - Spencer Rugaber resulting in my TAJ Report
Java Visualization - John Stasko Here is my preliminary report and my final report.

Information Visualization (CS7450)
Foundations of Educational Technology (CS6460)
Graduate Teaching Assistant Workshop (CS8803GTA)

Contact Information:

dzook@cc.gatech.edu