Catalin Francu
Email:		cata@francu.com
Web:		http://catalin.francu.com
Location:	San Francisco, CA, USA

Resume of resume

  Looking for challenging projects involving both software development 
  and algorithms design. I'm more and more interested in online
  applications. I prefer projects that truly benefit people (see DEX online
  below) and whatever comes out of my hands must be free software.


Personal Projects

  Since 2001	DEX online, http://dexonline.ro

		DEX online is the largest online Romanian dictionary.
		The project aims to make existing printed dictionaries
		available online. It caught a lot of momentum and gathered
		dozens of volunteers which I helped coordinate. Currently knows
		360,000 definitions and serves 30,000 users / 180,000 queries
		daily.

  Since 2002	Nilatac, http://catalin.francu.com/nilatac/book.php

		Suicide chess engine based on proof-number search and
		alpha-beta. Active 24/7 on FICS (freechess.org), where it
		is one of the better suicide computers. Extensive work to
		solve numerous openings. Opening book available for online
		querying.


Work Experience

  2002-2006     Google Inc., Mountain View, CA

		- Tech lead for Noogler, a web application used by new hires
		during their first week.

		- Developer of a project database web application. Keeps track
		of projects, people, allocations, weekly reports. Includes
		various reporting capabilities and limited task/project
		management functionality.

		- Wrote SiteInfo, a tool that traces a single URL
		through Google's crawling and indexing system.

		- (internship) Improved the PageRank by removing irrelevant
		links.

  2000		Central European Olympiad in Informatics, Cluj, Romania
		Member in the Scientific Committee

  1998-1999	"Tudor Vianu" High-School of Computer Science, Bucharest
		Teacher: Introduction to Programming (Pascal programming
		course and laboratory, 9th grade); Data Structures and
		Algorithms (laboratory, 10th grade).

  1997-2000	Helped prepare the Romanian high-school team for international
		programming contests (on an irregular basis)


Skills

  - Strong background in algorithms and theoretical computer science;
  - Known operating systems: GNU/Linux (Windows is just a gaming platform);
  - Languages: C/C++, Java (and Scheme, Delphi/Pascal, Visual Basic, Prolog);
  - Databases: MySQL;
  - Web development: HTML, CSS, PHP, Smarty, some Perl;


Education

  1999-2002	Master of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
		Thesis: Real-Time Scheduling for Java. GPA: 4.9 of 5.

  1996-1999	Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania
		Three years in the Computer Science Department. GPA: 8.9 of 10.

  1992-1996	High-School of Computer Science, Bucharest Romania
		Valedictorian


Awards

  2001		7th place at the ACM ICPC World Finals

  1996		High-School: Silver Medal at the International Olympiad in
		Informatics


Other

  Chess (playing and programming, including variants), music (theory
  and history), literature, hiking, volleyball.