Wei-Hwa Huang

Objective/Overview

Unpaid Experience

• Race for the Galaxy
  Graphic design work, prototyping, and game-design consulting on this strategy card game, working under acclaimed game designer Thomas Lehmann. Created first draft of icon-based cards in an attempt to make game accessible to a wider audience. Created simulator for calculation of solitaire-rules game balance. Copy-edited several revisions of cards and rules. Communicated with actual-game graphic designer regarding small but important game design details.
• Helping to organize International Puzzle Party 29, held some time in 2009 in the Bay Area. Currently helping with computer-related work, including setting up MediaWiki on a dedicated server.
• Various volunteer and planning work in the Bay Area Game community.
• The Locked House of Dr. Matrix (unpublished)
  A puzzle hunt of 27 puzzles created for the Gathering for Gardner 8 conference, created in honor of Martin Gardner.
• 2007 Philadelphia Inquirer Sudoku National Championship
  Created all the Sudoku puzzles used in the first-ever live U.S.-wide Sudoku competition.
• Googol Conglomerate
  On a team of 7 organizers that ran a weekend-long puzzle hunt held in the Bay Area the weekend of June 9-10, 2007. 240 puzzle-solvers in teams of 12 attacked a large collection of more than 40 complicated puzzles, which involved tasks as diverse as playing a pinball machine with custom software modded to encode a secret message, decoding a mathematical equation by looking for numbers in a ball pit, and trying to solve impossible trivia questions where the answer is secretly hidden in the Google Ad results.
• Regular volunteer for the California Extreme Classic Arcade Games Show, including setup of various machines.

Paid Experience

• Software Engineer and Puzzle Designer, June 2002 - July 2008
  Google, Mountain View CA
  Various responsibilities while working in different sections of the company.
  • OpenSocial Gadget: WoShamBo
    Created WoShamBo, a sample interactive game gadget that demonstrates how to use the OpenSocial API for game development.
  • Puzzles for "Engineer Appreciation Day"
    Created and edited a collection of engineer-oriented puzzles for an event on Google campus. These puzzles were interesting, with an intended solution, but often very open-ended with room for more exploration, which might include programming expertise.
  • Google Games
    Led the puzzle design team that provided puzzle challenges for Google Games, a "soft recruiting" event where recruiters went on college campuses and had schools compete against each other in fun mini-events.
  • iGoogle, Gadgets, Google App Engine
    The Da Vinci Code Quest gadget turned into Wei-Hwa's Puzzles, a "puzzle-of-the-week" gadget. It was updated weekly until December 2006 and sporadically since then. Several Javascript APIs were added to Google Gadgets as a result of the puzzle gadget. The gadgets were ported to Google App Engine and became open-source in 2008, with some new server-side updates.
  • The Da Vinci Code Quest on Google
    Working on a small team with members from Corporate Marketing and Product Marketing to build a cross-promotion with Google products and Sony Pictures' movie The Da Vinci Code. Serving as both engineering work and puzzle design; writing generators for puzzles.
  • AdSpam Team
    Worked on various techniques used to combat Click fraud on Google Ad properties. Details and numbers cannot be divulged here.
  • Unicode Cleanup
    During 2004, cleaned up an ugly bit of Unicode code in Google UTF-8 infrastructure, speeding up document retrieval by about 1%.
  • CJK Spell Checker
    Helped with the creation of the Japanese and Chinese versions of the Google spell checker. Various tasks, including using an early version of MapReduce. Named on U.S. patent application #20050289463 as a result of this work.
  • Quality Evaluation
    Became an expert on the Google logs systems and created log results for analysis by the rest of the team. Also built a tool that calulated different metrics on a fixed set of queries, and graphs these metrics for quick visual analysis. Porting several circa-2002 Google technologies to 2003 tools. Created and maintained anonymized user session-based data from May 2003 to October 2004.
  • Search Term Operators
    Worked on an early version of the % (near) operator in Google Search, reviewed the .. (numrange) operator, and did most of the work on the binary - (optional concatenation) operator. Several other conceptual demos of search functionality that never made it to live production.
• Senior Member of Technical Staff, February 2000 - February 2002
  ARMILLAIRE Technologies, Bethesda MD
  ARBROS Communications, Silver Spring MD
  Designed and developed Java-based HTTP Web Manager for the Armillaire-2000(TM) Switch, an advanced packet-based switching system that provides Voice Telephony and ANSI/ITU-T SS7 Signaling over ATM. Responsible for the design and development of the Web-based GUI for OAM&P. Designed and tested XML-based prototypes of Armillaire-2000 configuration utilities. Designed Service Feature Server for VoIP prototype. Designed XML interface for ISM module for Armillaire-5000(TM) Switch.
  Responsibilities include:
  • Design and development of GUI prototypes
  • Design and partial development of Provisioning Servlet/Applet system
  • Design and development of Alarm Management system
  • Internationalization of GUI
  • Migration of switch configuration to XML-based design
  • Team design of potential Voice over IP (VoIP) network
  • Support as needed
  GUI development skills include:
  • Java Servlet programming
  • Applet programming; use of Swing libraries
  • Applet/Servlet Tunnelling
  • JNI (Java Native Interface)
  • JSP (Java Server Pages)
  • Installation and maintenance of Java Web Server 2.0 on Solaris and NT systems
  Other skills include:
  • Writing test plans and supporting System Integration
  • Refining User Documentation
  • Member of ISO-9001 Tiger Team
  • Coordination of Company Picnic
  
  
• Government Contractor, October 1998 - February 2000
  DynCorp, Reston VA
  GTE Information Systems LLC, Chantilly VA
  GTE Government Systems, Chantilly VA
  Worked on the JSAN (Joint Staff Automation for the Nineties) contract as part of the Joint Staff Integration Lab, servicing the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States of America. Projects include:
  • Designing, testing, and deployment of WWW browsers across the entire Joint Staff in order to meet Y2K-compliance deadlines. Skills used include creation of package with Microsoft's IEAK and deployment with SMS 1.2 Server.
  • Rewriting Appointment Calendar generation program used by the Office of the Chairman. Skills used include VBA development, support and documentation writing.
  
  
• Government Contractor, September 1996 - September 1997
  GTE Government Systems Corporation, Chantilly VA
  Contracted for the Defense Technical Information Center (branch of the Department of Defense); programmed perl CGI scripts and some Microsoft Word Basic macros to generate DefenseLINK News Release WWW pages. Included administration of News Release database.
  
  
• Summer Student, Summer of 1993
  Institute for Defense Analyses: Supercomputing Research Center, Bowie MD
  Generalized and solved a theoretical parallel networking problem utilizing C programming and linear algebra.

Part-Time Experience

• Author, March 2008 - current Sterling Publishing
  Currently working on a sudoku variant book, "Mutant Sudoku", with co-author Thomas Snyder. Expected publication date in early 2009.
• Puzzle Challenge Author, Winter 2001
  Binary Arts, Alexandria VA
  Created puzzle challenges for product Metro. Selection of "40 Beginner-to-Expert Challenges."
• Puzzle-Generation Software Author, Winter 2000
  Dell Magazines, New York NY
  Created software, using Visual C++, that generated Number Place puzzles (a numerical logic puzzle) suitable for publication.
• Puzzle Checker, ongoing
  Sterling Publishing, New York NY
  Checked drafts of books for errors in preparation for publication; solved all puzzles and verified that solutions were unique (about 5% of puzzles were flawed and were revised before publication). I've done so for about 5 books so far.
• Part-time puzzle designer, February 1997 - Fall 1998
  Smart Games, Incorporated , Salem MA
  Software game company. Designed and created strategy-based levels for SmartGames Stratajams and SmartGames Puzzle Challenge #2.
• Editor, January 1994 - November 1995
  Caltech campus newspaper The California Tech
  Elected and paid position; in charge of layout and design of paper; editing, public relations, and personnel management.

Education

• California Institute of Technology, Pasadena CA
  B.S. in Engineering and Applied Science (Comp. Sci. Option), 1998
  
• Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring MD
  Blair Magnet Program, graduated 1993

Selected Honors & Awards

• 2006 World Sudoku Championship in Lucca, Italy; Third Place individual
• Summer 2006 Bay Area Pinball Association Grand Champion
• 1999 World Puzzle Championship at Budapest, Hungary; First Place
• 1995-1996 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, Southern California Regionals at San Diego, CA; First Place Team Member
• 1993-1994 William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition; Putnam Fellow
• 1993 Westinghouse Science Talent Search; 6th Place Finalist
• 1993 USA Mathematical Olympiad; First Place

Credentials

• Microsoft Certified Professional (passed MCSE exams for NT Workstation 4.0 and NT Server 4.0)
• Certified Novell Netware Administrator (CNA)
• Inactive (U.S. Governmental) TS-Level (Top Secret) Clearance [U.S. Citizen]
• Member of Mensa (The High IQ Society)

Computer Skills

• Javascript (AJAX)
• Python
• Perl

• C
• C++
• Pascal
• LISP
• Visual Basic (especially VBA)
• HTML
• XML
• TeX (LaTeX and AMS-TeX)
• Java
• BASIC

• VC++
• Tcl/Tk
• LOGO
• Assembly
• SQL

• Unix (many flavors)
• DOS
• MacOS
• NetWare
• Windows 95/98
• Windows NT 4.0

• OpenGL
• Open Inventor
• C++ Standard Template Library
• Java Swing
• Java Servlets

• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Premiere
• Adobe Pagemaker
• Adobe Illustrator
• Macromedia Freehand
• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft Project
• Microsoft Word
• and others

Coursework

On-the-job Courses

• Multiple Microsoft Solution Developer courses
• Novell network administration

Undergraduate Coursework

• Discrete Mathematics and Computation
• Distributed and Parallel Programming
• Computer Graphics
• Basic Electronics
• Algorithms and Design
• Computational Methods

Other Skills and Interests

• Fluent in American English and Mandarin Chinese; can read Japanese
• Puzzles and games, including
  • mechanical puzzles
  • crossword puzzles
  • board games
  • card games
• desktop publishing and graphic design
• pinball
• human language translation
• typeface design and graphics
• MIDI sequencing
• anime