Curriculum Vitae

Legal notes

Some of the information below is defined as sensitive under the terms of italian law n. 675 of December 31, 1996 and later modification. Their being shown here does not imply any authorization to their use. Anyone whishing to extract, archive or in any way use the following information (for non personal use, see Art.3) is required to contact me asking for authorization.

Personal data

Name:

Gianni Ceccarelli

Place and date of birth:

San Giovanni Valdarno (AR, Italy), 19770405 (april 5, 1977)

Address:

via Trieste, 214
52020 Ambra (AR)
Italia

E-mail:

dakkar@thenautilus.net

Telephone:

+393478229734

Education

Note: the names of the various education levels, exams, etc. are very hard to translate. If you have any suggestion, don't hesitate to tell me.

Graduated from junior high school (Licenza media) from Scuola Media Statale A. Manzoni of Bucine (AR, Italy) in 1991.

Greduated from high school (Diploma di maturità scientifica) from Liceo Scientifico Francesco Redi of Arezzo (Italy) in 1996, course MFI (special course with additional mathematics, physics and computer science lessons), with top marks (60/60). As part of the final exam I presented a short thesis about photorealistic image generation with computers, particularly in respect to ray-tracing.

On 20011019 I graduated (Laurea) in computer science from Pisa University with top marks (110/110 e lode); moreover I've been a fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa for all the five years of university.

Exams, grade, and description of acquired knowledge:

Being a fellow of Scuola Normale, I had additional exams:

My university thesis is about an extension of reinforcement learning algorithms using recurrent neural networks for structured data, allowing the treatment of (for example) sets of cooperating agents with communication networks. Both the thesis (Italian only) and the associated C++ library are available on SourceForge. The library is released under the terms of the GNU LGPL and the thesis undef the terms of the GNU FDL.

From 20020101 to 20021231 I've been a PhD student at the Computer Science Departement of Pisa University. I quit to find a job.

Work experiences

From 20030203 to 20050631 I worked for Hyperborea s.c..

Working for Hyperborea I've learned several design and development techniques, and I've polished my knowledge in several areas. Specifically:

• Programming in Python.
• Integration into a group of developers and coordinating with them.
• Tracking bug reports (using GNATS).
• Distributed develpment and version tracking (with CVS).
• Design and development of web/CGI appliacations.
• Integeration of relational databases with web applications.
• Usage of Oracle (8 and 9i), PostgreSQL, MySQL.
• XML and related technologies: XPath, XSLT e XSL-FO, XML Schema

Among the various projects I participated in, the most significant are:

• iboFlex, a framework to ease the development of web applications for data-entry into a database, based on ibo (an in-house application server) and XSLT.
• A general, highly flexible framework for web-based questionnaires. It can handle arbitrarily complex questionnaires, with validation of the answer, and variable presentation (questions and answers in arbitrary order, with multiple formulations for each). It uses XML as representation format and XSLT for presentation.
• Arianna version 3, a program for the cataloguing and description of historic archives, based on XML, for which I've defined the internal representation formats and developed the full-text indexing and searching system.
• A system for the destributed planning and programming of didactic activities in universities, developed in collaboration with Università di Milano Bicocca, for which I worked on the high-level design and the definition of formats and protocols for data interchange. At the moment the system is being developed by the spin-off TabulaeX.
• The Ecumene project, a national projects for the distribution of knowledge about artistic and historical heritage of the Italian Catholic Church, in which I worked on the architectural design, on the design and development of some modules, and on the definition of formats and protocols for data interchange.

In 2005 I helped to start Studio Blackbit, and I'm now working with them.

Other experiences

In 1992 I started development of the program Scegli la ruota giusta (Choose the right wheel) for tellure Rôta of Formigine (MO, Italy). They make and sell wheels for industrial applications; the program was to be put on counters of hardware stores, so that customers could use it to choose, among the various products, the best wheel (in terms of both pricing and performance) for their application. The first version was written in MS Quick Basic 4.5, later it's been completely rewritten in Borland Pascal. It has a complete graphical user interface, with explicative drawings and animations (it was meant to run on Intel 386 systems, with standard VGA cards, under DOS). The database system for searching the catalog is based on functions I wrote solely for this program. Latest versions include an internationalization system, and I supervised (with the help of tellure Rôta's specialists) translation in english, french, german and spanish.

In 1995 I developer for PFB (Modena, Italy) a program for a test bench for overspeed governors. They make and sell mechanical lift components; the overspeed governor is a pulley, in which runs a cable linked to the lift proper: if the cable (i.e. the lift) exceeds a fixed speed, the pulley must block, in so doing pulling the cable and activating the emergency braking system. The program, using a dedicated interface I developed to a speed sensor (an optical encoder hooked to the paraller port), is able to read with high precision the intervention speed of the governor (that is, the highest speed reached before blocking); it allows then to archive tests and print certificates of comformity. The system runs on PCs, in text mode under DOS, and it's written in Borland Pascal. The database system is, also in this case, writted ad-hoc.

From 1996 I took part in the construction of a Ethernet local area network among etherogeneous machines (Macintosh and PC with Windows, DOS, Linux). Between 1997 and 2001 I've been unofficially responsible of the computer room in the Collegio Carducci of the Scuola Normale (where I lived): when I left it consisted of 8 PC, running MS Windows NT 4 and Linux (we used the RedHat distribution), and two iMac. There were also two laser printers, accessible from every machine on the network; the whole room was protected from external attacks with a NAT (Network Address Translator) made with a PC running Linux. The merit for the good results is not only mine: I've been helped by four colleagues, without whose collaboration it would not have been possible to realize everything we did. I organized a course of introductory lessons on the use of computers for users of the room; the lessons have been held by my colleagues.

In 1997 I translated from english some articles about programming for IBM OS/2 Presentation Manager for the on-line magazine Just Warp!.

Between July and August, 2000 I've been invited to University of Wollongong in Australia to work with prof. Ah Chung Tsoi and his group on neural networks for structured domains.

In 2000 I held some lessons on Perl programming for some of my fellow students, showing the basics of the language (and some obscure characteristic because of evil questions)

I've also held a short lesson on the workings, usage and problems of Internet as part of a course for junior high school teachers, organized by my junior high school math teacher.

I wrote the italian translation of SourceForge, and I helped the italian translators of KDE 2.

Abilities

I know several programming languages:

I prefer imperative and object-oriented languages; I have some (design) difficulty with functional languages (Scheme, ML, Haskell).

I'm learning about generation and management of Web sites using XML/XSL with XWeb, Apache Cocoon 2 and AxKit. This site is an example of what I have accomplished so far (see also the source). I'm working on a site generation system integrated with subversion.

I have a strong interest (and strong opinions) on user interfaces. The best ones (in my opinion), text mode: WordStar 4.0, Pine; file/folder management: IBM Work Place Shell for OS/2; for PDAs: Apple Newton. Becaus of this I have designed many user interfaces (many more than I actually implemented).

I don't think I'm very good at teaching, but the ones who attended my lessons considered themselves satisfied.

As a manager/responsible I had some successes, coordinating a team of five people in the administration of a computer network, keeping at first place security and at second place reliability for users (which includes to not change users' habits in name of innovation). In July 2004 I've taken part in the organization of the first Italian Perl Workshop, in Pisa; in 2005 I did it again, with the second Italian Perl Workshop.

I am sysadm for my Linux machine, running Apache (with mod_perl), Sendmail, MySQL, Squid, Bind. This machine handles the ADSL connection, name resolution and Web access (via proxy) for a small LAN.

I speak, read and write fluently in Italian and English; I can read French and with some difficulties Spanish. I've attended a first-level course of Japanese, and I passed the final exam.

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