Jeff Goldsmith

Jeffrey Mitchell Goldsmith

IGN Entertainment
8000 Marina Blvd
Brisbane, CA 94005
(626)-440-9994
jeff@ign.com

Caltech Computer Graphics Group
Caltech 350-74
Pasadena, CA 91125
(626)-395-2820
jeff@gg.caltech.edu

Focii:

Internet server-side programming
Large-scale data processing and analysis, web analytics
Parallel Processing, Scientific/Technical Applications
Computer Graphics, Computer Animation, Differential Geometry

Some Active Skills:

Java, perl, HTML, Servlets, JSP, Oracle

Education:

M.S. Computer Science '95
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA

Exchange Student
Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA

M.S., B.S. Computer Science '83, '81
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY

Experience:

2/99-Present: Principal Software Engineer
IGN Entertainment
Brisbane, CA

Built unique constaint-based ad serving system over commercial ad server.
Built custom web analytics system:
- Generates hundreds of types of reports daily, totalling in the tens of thousands.
- Handles > 50,000,000 hits per day.
- Accepts many types of input events.
- Supplies data to many other apps, including live publishing systems.
- Used by over 10 properties regularly, including several partners.
Built registration systems, signed up millions of users.
Built my pages system for IGN, Chickclick, and PowerStudents. (The latter two properties are defunct.)
Built large (75-page) dynamic site, (High School Alumni), sold for over $1,000,000
Built web analytics extranet web site, usage of which was sold to partners, advertisers, and game companies.
Built ad inventory management system.
Added engineering techniques to ad operations group.
Built user article recommendation and user interest tracking system.
Implemented partnership deals with dozens of companies.
Built many custom reports and analyses.
Built and maintained Mediaviewer high-traffic interactive application.
Built and managed large-scale data sets. E.g. User activity, game popularity.
Built a stop-gap ad server, used when the live server was down.
Built 3-tier code change logging system in under 2 hours.
Benchmarked and specified application server technology, built systems to test several app servers.
Systems are very high-traffic server-side three-tier systems using Oracle, JSP, and Java.
Did technical due diligence on deals and acquisitions.

6/94-2/99: Member of Technical Staff
LinkWinds Development Group
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA

Built Java-based 2D Science Visualization system.
Built 3D vector field visualization tools.
Built isosurface extraction and display tool for 3D scalar data in several coordinate systems.
Added 3D lighting to Data Visualization system
Designed and built MacDraw-like utility integrated with visualization system
Example images:

10/89-6/94: Research Assistant/Graduate Student
Computer Graphics Group
Caltech, Pasadena, CA

Studied Numerical Optimization for Animation
Designed and implemented broadcast-quality video studio

11/83-7/93: Member of Technical Staff
Computer Graphics Laboratory, JPL

Created and performed live computer simulations of encounter experiments for Voyager Update television programs.
Designed and implemented Ray Tracer that ran on both parallel and sequential computers. Created a new very fast ray tracing algorithm.
Applied numerical differential geometry to magnetohydrodynamics to model magnetic flux tubes in space and near planets and comets.
Wrote solid modeling language that used non-linear 3D transfomations.
Created Computer Animation, including:
- Neptune's Magnetosphere
- Voyager at Neptune
- Supernova I & II—complete video productions
- Voyager at the Heliopause
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Simulation of formation of comets' plasma tails
- Goldstone 64m. antenna rehabilitation
- Saturn fly-by in Omnimax format

5/80-1/83: Research Assistant
Center for Interactive Computer Graphics, RPI

Wrote Z-buffer hidden surface removal package
Created Computer Animation, including:
- Grumman space antenna simulation
- Laser cavity simulation for General Electric
- Electron interaction in normal and superconducting states
- New York City neighborhood demonstration for New York State Museum

1/77-1/79: Calculator Programmer,
United Vision Services, Middletown, NY

Designed and implemented new iterative algorithm to solve thick lens formula to grind eyeglass lenses in optical surfacing laboratory. System may be still in use in industry; it was for at least 15 years.

Published:

My web site contains material about research, figure skating, bridge, games, and a little bit else. It includes bridge columns which have been printed in newspapers and magazines across the world.

14 North American Bridge Championship casebooks (3/year). Fall 2002-present. (http://www.acbl.org/play/casebooks.html)

Better Coding of Two-Suiters, The Bridge World, Vol. 78, No. 9, June 2007, p. 30.

Transfers Over Micheals, The Bridge World, Vol 77, No. 10, July 2006, pp 36-37.

An Example of a Network-Based Approach to Data Access, Visualization, Interactive Analysis, and Distribution, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 81, No. 3, March 2000, pp 555-566 (Elson, Allen, Goldsmith, and Weibel)

Marching Cubes in Cylindrical and Spherical Coordinates,
journal of graphics tools, Vol. 1, No. 1, April 1996.

A Hypercube Ray Tracer,
ACM Conference on Hypercubes and Parallel Programming Procedings, 1988.

Automatic Generation of Object Hierarchies,
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, May 1987.

Optimized Computer-Generated Motion for Animation,
(Masters Thesis) Technical Report, Computer Science Department, Caltech, Sept. 1994.

Static and Dynamic Database Distribution for Graphics Ray Tracing on the Hypercube,
Technical Report, CCCP, 1986.

A Ray Tracing System for the Hypercube,
Technical Report, Caltech Concurrent Computing Project, 1985.

Reparameterization of Surfaces by Lines of Curvature,
Technical Report, RPI Center for Interactive Computer Graphics, Oct. 1983. (Masters Thesis)

Voyager at the Outer Planets,
SIGGRAPH '89 film show.

Voyager at Neptune movies totaled 10 minutes in length and were broadcast over national television for ten days surrounding the encounter. They were also integral parts of the 51 Voyager Update live TV shows.

Hubble Space Telescope movie was featured at the Paris Air Show.

Self-Portrait is in SIGGRAPH Video Review Vol. 49 and has aired on MTV.

Halley's comet animation appeared as part of Nova and KCET's Helley's comet special.

Omnimax movie was included in The Magic Egg, the first internationally distributed computer graphics Omnimax film.

Stills in various publications including:

Covers and Frontispieces of Solving Problems with Concurrent Processors, vols. I and II, G. Fox, et al.

3-page photo spread in premiere issue of Computers in Science

Superquadrics and Angle-Preserving Transformations,
Al Barr, IEEE CG&A, Jan. 1981 (with Al Barr).

Faster Calculation of Superquadric Shapes,
R. Franklin and Al Barr, IEE CG&A, July 1981 (with Al Barr).

Front Cover of and Prepublication Announcement for IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Vol. 1, No. 1, Jan 1981 (with Al Barr).

New York State Museum made 6'x6' Mural of neighborhood still to go with videotape.

Awards:

SMPTE Inaugural Scholarship 1990-91, renewed 1991-2

NASA Manned Flight Awareness Honoree

CINE Golden Eagle for International Achievement for Hubble Animation

NASA Software of the Year Award, 1996 (LinkWinds project)

Numerous JPL and NASA group achievement awards (JPL Computer Graphics Lab, LinkWinds, and WebWinds)

Jeff Goldsmith, jeff@gg.caltech.edu, Sept 23, 2007