I'm a PhD candidate in the computer engineering department at UC Davis. My research is in the area of urban mobile networking. In particular, I'm interested in learning more about how city life can be enriched through smarter interaction between the 6th-sense fabric that's being created by the sudden explosion of PDAs, cellular phones, and laptops.

While my academic background is technical, my interests are more on the soft side of things: discovering when and where technology can make apppropriate improvements to our concept of daily life, and also exploring interesting, edgy new technologies to discover new emergent properties that they create. I focus my work on "Delay-Tolerant Networking" (DTN) or opportunistic networking. I'm especially interested in how these networking models play a part in the development of pervasive/ubiquitous wireless network applications and technologies.

Things that please me:
Random things that please me:
.Swimming in the Atlantic Ocean
.Holding a violin
.Solving a tricky programming challenge
.Brie and Bread with Rooibos tea at night
.Public, interactive water displays
.Public transit that works well
.High-density urban areas
.Spontaneous rhythmic events (drum circles, street drummers)
.Emergent properties
.Text messaging
.Trader Joe's
.Most music by Orbital
.People complimenting my eyes
.People who can take compliments gracefully
.My other half, Rob
.Foreign languages
.Writing a chunk of code that works the first time
.Perfect 5ths
.Christmas caroling
.Philosophical challenges (actually, these irritate me a lot, too)
.Techno-gadgets
.Brushed metal facaded convection toaster ovens
.Break dancing and capoeira
.Dance Dance Revolution (DDR)
.Green tea, and green tea flavored things
.Oolong tea.
.Whole-leaf tea. No more twigs and fannings for me!
.Corporations that care about their employees and customers