scott e. helgesen
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Employment
08/08 - Present
Director Software Engineering, Primary Analysis and Simulation
Pacific Biosciences, Menlo Park, CA
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03/05 - 08/08
Vice President / CTO
Technadyne Engineering Consultants, Albuquerque, NM
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07/01 - 06/05
Director Software Engineering
454 Life Sciences Corporation, Branford, CT
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12/99 - 6/01
Vice President / Chief Technical Officer
InternetControls, Santa Clara, CA
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7/91 - 11/99
President / Director Software Engineering
Foundation Software Technologies, Albuquerque, NM
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6/87 - 12/99
Senior Software Engineer / Project Leader
Technadyne Engineering Consultants, Albuquerque, NM
Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM
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1/97 - 1/98
President / Director
Autumn Light Entertainment, Albuquerque, NM
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3/86 - 6/87
Information Systems Staff Member
AT&T Network Systems Division, Morristown, NJ
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5/83 - 2/86
Software Engineer
General Dynamics Data Systems, Norwich, CT and San Diego, CA
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Education
8/79 - 4/83
John Brown University, Siloam Springs, AR
BS Electrical Engineering, Summa Cum Laude, 4.0 GPA
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9/84 - 9/85
University of California, San Diego, CA
23 hours completed towards an MS Applied Mechanics and Engineering Science with emphasis in Biomedical Engineering, maintained an A average.
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Experience
Languages
Java, C/C++, XML, HTML, Javascript... any Language
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Operating Systems
Linux, Windows, Unix, VxWorks... any OS
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Database
MySQL, MS SQL Server, Oracle, JDBC... any Database Technology
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Internet and GUI
Java Swing, GUI Design, Applets, Servlets... any Internet and GUI Technology
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Networking
Internet protocols, TCP/IP, sockets, HTTP, Ethernet... any Network Technology
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Embedded
FPGA Configurable Computing, Micro-controller, PIC Firmware... any Embedded
  • Proven ability to manage and lead a team (local and remote) to design and develop large complex projects.
  • Extensive experience in distributed networked n-tier system design and implementation
  • Understand and utilize sound software engineering principles, and reusable modules
  • Understand and utilize data-driven concepts, redundancy, 24/7 operations, and self-diagnostics
  • Proven ability to understand diverse application requirements
  • Proven ability to apply software and hardware technologies to provide cost-effective solutions
  • Actually have implemented millions of lines of production fielded software
Awards
Employee Recognition Award, General Dynamics Corporation
Presidential Scholarship (John Brown University) for highest ACT entrance score
Scholarship (John Brown University) for Highest ranking student in Engineering
Fred W. Olney Engineering Scholarship (John Brown University)
Member of Alpha Chi Honor Society (John Brown University)
College Varsity Letter in Soccer (John Brown University)
Highest GPA Graduate (High School - graduated 1 year early)
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Project Details
Pacific Biosciences

Director Software Engineering, Primary Analysis and Simulation for a bleeding edge biotech firm. The company is creating a 3rd generation DNA genome sequencing instrument which will ultimately realize the $1,000 human genome sequenced in 15 minutes.>

Technadyne Engineering Consultants

Vice President and Chief Technical Officer for a cutting edge consulting firm. The company provides technical services for a wide variety of projects including complex software development and engineering sciences. Led the effort to pursue highly technical project development including architecture, design, management and implementation of multiple large scale systems. One Project was software for the supervisory control of gamma and neutron scanning detector systems for large shipping containers at megaports for the Department of Homeland Security. Another project involved software development for a new personalized film creation application that allows anyone to create their own custom DVD within minutes. This involved developing complex algorithms to interpret a proprietary film editing directives language to create complete film and graphic productions automatically with no human intervention. All development involved Java, C, and various database and web technologies.

454 Life Sciences Corporation

Director Software Engineering of a cutting edge biotech which was recently sold to Roche Diagnostics for over $150M. Developed from the ground up the team and the software architecture for the massively parallel genome sequencing technology developed at 454. The system is known as a disruptive technology for its multiple orders of magnitude leap in speed and cost over previous sequencing technologies. With previous technologies, it took a year and $100,000,000 to sequence the entire human genome. 454's ultimate goal is to leverage their new technology to accomplish the same task for under $1,000 in less than a day. Current system successfully sequenced a human genome with multiple pass coverage for $1,000,000. The software engineering group developed Flexware(tm) technology which utilizes FPGAs in a reconfigurable computing architecture to execute image processing and genome assembly algorithms in real time during instrument sequencing. The entire software/Flexware system was implemented in C, Java, VHDL, and Handel-C running on the Linux OS and in Xilinx Virtex II FPGAs. Also co-authored two grant applications which have resulted in over $7,000,000 in grant awards from the NIH. Received co-author credit for article: Genome Sequencing In Microfabricated High-density Picolitre Reactors in Nature Magazine describing the technology and its groundbreaking capabilities.

InternetControls

Vice President and Chief Technical Officer as well as Founder of a Silicon Valley seed funded startup ($ 1.4M) which was part of the garage.com portfolio of companies. InternetControls created hardware and software technology that enabled Internet connectivity to the real world. Designed the technology and managed the team that created the hardware and software capability resulting in a proprietary stand alone StrongArm and Xilinx FPGA based computer called an Interact. The computer was a general purpose platform that acted as a web server which could connect to all sorts of physical real world devices such as video, audio, digital and analog I/O, wiegand card readers, RS232, USB, etc.

The ultimate goal was to build the technology to enable Virtual Presence (the ability for a person to be anywhere and affect the remote environment from anywhere) using the Internet as the networking infrastructure. Designed technology (Liquid Hardware) involving the ability to change the hardware logic of the device on-the-fly over the Internet from a new kind of ASP modeled website. The company was offered nearly $10,000,000 after just 5 months into operations for the technology and engineering team although the VC investors decided against selling at that time.

Foundation Software Technologies

Director Software Engineering and President of a software development company that provided expert solutions to unique applications utilizing a base of company created reusable software modules. Directly responsible for the management and implementation of all company projects.

The company developed an integrated Access Control, Alarm Display, Video ID Badging, and CCTV Control System. This large system consists of over 600,000 lines of software in over 50 different programs as well as over 150,000 lines of interface description data files. The design is based on a message-passing, distributed architecture that has built-in redundant features for fault tolerant execution. Current installations in the United States include multiple DOE facilities, Sacramento Airport, a clean room pharmaceutical operation, and others. The installations consist of multiple workstation and field processor CPUs networked via Ethernet spread out over the entire complex.

The data-driven nature of the design allowed a Japanese version of the system to be implemented that utilized the same runtime executables. In partnership with Card Control Systems of California and Oki Electric of Japan this version of the system has been installed in various sites throughout Japan. An Iris scan biometric mechanism was also integrated with the system that was installed at the 1998 Nagano Olympic Games.

Led the effort to convert the entire C Unix based system over to a Java Internet/Intranet ready system.

Technadyne Engineering Consultants - Sandia National Laboratories

SAR-ATR - Synthetic Aperture Radar - Automatic Target Recognition

Designed and developed software to identify partially obscured targets in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. The software used a grayscale chunky template-matching scheme as the final step in a large ATR system. The software was designed to run in a distributed architecture of networked Sun workstations as well as an Intel Paragon parallel super computer and was integrated into the KHOROS image processing development environment.

SICADS - Site Independent Configurable Alarm Display System

Primary software designer for the Site Independent Configurable Alarm Display System (SICADS), a data driven, computerized alarm display system that is installed at a DOE facility in Ohio. The system graphically shows the status of all sensors and provides automatic video switching to the area of concern as well as priority event management. The system also provided complete computerized redundancy with automatic switch over in the event of equipment malfunction or hostile take-over situations. Responsible for the design and development of the following process modules: SICADS Runtime Manager, Main Logger, Print Logger, Speech Logger, Disk Logger, Health Checker, Console Switcher, CCTV Manager, Video Control Subsystem, and Simulation Manager.

AIDA - Application Independent Development Accelerator

Designed and implemented an application independent development environment, which consisted of various process and library modules to be used for rapid prototyping of distributed architecture application programs. The environment encouraged a data-driven approach to applications development. The modules developed included: Window Manager, Printer Manager, Keyboard Manager, Voice Manager, Simulation Manager, Trace/Syserr Diagnostic Tools, Interprocess Communications Functions, Generic Data File Parser Functions, DOS Multi-Tasker Functions, and Database Manager. Also developed a voice-input capability to the AIDA environment utilizing off-the-shelf hardware and custom designed software.

LIC - Low Intensity Conflict

Designed and implemented prototype software to provide an interface for Army personnel to control a mobile alarm display system for small camps. The software included online site setup instructions as well as video switcher control for controlling camera views.

AutoCAD DXF Format Translation Functions

Designed and developed a set of functions used to extract information from AutoCAD DXF files. The functions were also used to construct DXF files from graphical entity description arguments. The general-purpose functions were successfully used to develop an AutoCAD DX to/from LISP format file translation mechanism utilized by an artificial intelligent site security evaluation system.

LASS - Embassy Logging and Accountability Subsystem

Designed and implemented the software for the Embassy Logging and Accountability Subsystem, a security system to be used by embassy Marine guards. The system provided the complete recording of all alarm activity and subsequent alarm assessments. It also provided quick access to emergency procedures for various situations. This work was done for the Department of State.

Autumn Light Entertainment

President and Director as well as Founder of a startup company that created the 3D CGI animation for the opening title sequence of 1997's top grossing Hollywood film Men in Black. The unique two and half minute sequence was of a computer-generated dragonfly swirling through the desert landscape for which the company name as well as my name appeared in the closing credits. Designed a new multimedia software product named MyTv intended to revolutionize the digital imaging, video presentation and non-linear editing markets.

AT&T Network Systems Division

Designed and developed a data-driven distributed processing control mechanism used to control high speed publishing systems which included optical disk file servers, industrial laser printers, aperture card input scanning devices, and various text and graphic editing workstations. The software consisted of a state/event table compiler, interactive runtime debug and simulation system, runtime application control functions, interprocess communications support functions, and network interface functions.

General Dynamics

Designed and implemented an automation operating system for "Factory of the Future" control based on concepts developed by the National Bureau of Standards Automation Manufacturing Research Facility.

Technical project leader for the design and development of the File Control System to provide paperless engineering control and the transfer of files between various CAD/CAM computers and IBM mainframes utilizing the HYPERchannel Network.