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Joyce Winslow
jwins@oregon.uoregon.edu
Carlos Vicente | Dirk Singels | Dave Meyer
Our newest employee, Carlos Vicente, came all the way from Barcelona to join
the Computing Center's Network Services staff on February 25.
Carlos' ties to the Computing Center began in 1996, when he took an undergraduate class in network engineering at Santo Domingo Institute of Technology (INTEC) in the Dominican Republic. His instructor was José Domìnguez, now a senior network engineer for Network Services. Network engineering suited Carlos' talents perfectly, and he soon found himself collaborating with José to build the first academic wide-area network in the Dominican Republic. Carlos participated in every phase of the project, from installing fiber-optic cables and internal wiring to setting up servers and managing services
This early hands-on experience served him well, and in 1999 Carlos got a scholarship to attend graduate school at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona. Studying in Spain gave him the opportunity to explore Europe a bit during the summer, and his most memorable trip was a 140-mile backpacking trek along part of the historic Camino de Santiago, a medieval pilgrimage route that runs from the Spanish/French border all the way to the city of Santiago in northeastern Spain.
After graduation Carlos worked for a short time for a Spanish Internet service provider. When the company fell victim to the dot com implosion, Carlos took advantage of an opening at the UO to rejoin his former mentor José as part of our Network Services team. One of Carlos' first assignments is to improve network management information, making router tracking and traffic engineering data more readily available for analysis. In the future he may also be called upon to oversee the UO's modem pools, managing the traffic load and troubleshooting connection problems.
While adjusting to Eugene's dreary winter weather is a challenge after a lifetime spent in sunnier climes, Carlos is looking forward to the many opportunities for outdoor adventures this area offers and plans to join the UO's Outdoor Program soon. He enjoys hiking, camping, and cycling and is also a motocross enthusiast.
Strictly speaking, Dirk Singels is not a native Oregonian, although he's lived in Eugene since the age of three and is a graduate of both South Eugene High and the UO.
Dirk stayed in town after high school and spent the next four years working various odd jobs, mostly at local fast-food establishments. Four years of flipping burgers convinced Dirk he'd have better career opportunities if he pursued a college education. He promptly enrolled at the UO and embarked on a course of study that earned him a B.S. in Computer Science in 1999.
Dirk immediately began work on a master's degree, paying his way with various
programming jobs both on and off campus. On campus, he worked 16 hours a week
for the UO Distance Education program, and Monday through Friday he commuted
to northwest Eugene to write programs for MLS Internet Media. This hectic schedule
inspired Dirk to interrupt his studies and "simplify his lifeÓ by
working full time for a single employer. When a systems analyst position with
Administrative Services opened at the Computing Center just over a year ago,
Dirk promptly applied and was hired.
Like most programmers, Dirk enjoys problem solving and the satisfaction of
seeing his solutions take shape in a practical way. Among his current projects
are setting up new web and file servers for UO Printing Services. He is also
helping to move the department's old MS-DOS-based internal accounting system
to Oracle.
Dirk, who plans to eventually finish his master's program, still spends a good deal of his spare time poring over computer textbooks, and his wife Jennifer, a medical office assistant, is studying to become a registered nurse. The couple recently bought a home in Cottage Grove, so home-maintenance chores now consume most of their weekends. Despite this busy schedule, they always make time to unwind by taking long walks along Dorena Lake with Zeus, their four-year-old Doberman.
Dave Meyer
Director
Advanced Network Technology Center [back to
top]
Dave Meyer has the sparsely furnished office of a guy constantly on the go. A half-eaten power bar teeters on the edge of his desk, a gym bag is at the ready near the door, and he keeps a big bottle of aspirin close at hand. On this particular afternoon he is dividing his attention between a ringing phone and the flickering data on his computer screen. "You're seeing a day in the life," he mutters, momentarily removing his telephone headset to hammer away at the keyboard.
This whirlwind pace is attributable to Dave's demanding dual roles as
director of the UO's Advanced Network Technology Center (ANTC) and chief
technologist and senior scientist for Sprint Corporation. Both jobs tap his
deep experience in advanced network technologies, which has been evolving since
his undergraduate days at the UO.
Dave first worked for the Computing Center in 1981, tending the campus network
in its earliest incarnation. There he began what was to be the first in a long
series of working collaborations with Dale Smith (now the director of Network
Services). A few years later, when Dave was working on his master's degree
in computer science, he joined Dale and his team of network technicians in designing
and building the UO's award-winning UOnet from the ground up.
Without entirely realizing it, Dave had slipped into his life's work. Network
technology was evolving exponentially, and network engineers like Dave had an
opportunity to help shape the future. His specialized expertise brought him
into contact with other network developers worldwide—notably Randy Bush,
the founder and principal engineer of the Internet service provider RAINnet
and later, director of advanced engineering at Verio and principal investigator
for the Network Startup Research Center (NSRC) at the UO. Dave persuaded Randy
to move RAINnet's exchange point to the UO, paving the way for innovative UO-based
network solutions and collaborations that benefited education, research, and
government institutions, as well as emerging networks worldwide.
In 1996, after having successfully launched OWEN/NERO (the Network for Engineering
and Research in Oregon), which provides high-speed wide-area network connectivity
for education and research in Oregon, Dave became director of the ANTC at the
UO. Formed to promote leading-edge research, engineering, and the development
of next-generation Internet protocol technologies, the ANTC oversees a number
of advanced networking projects. Among these are the innovative use of IP multicast
(an OWEN/NERO project), the Oregon Internet Exchange (Oregon-IX), the Oregon
Gigapop connection for the high-speed Internet2 research network, and the NSRC
(a project funded by a National Science Foundation grant to help support emerging
network technologies in the developing world). Many of these projects involve
partnerships with government agencies, national research foundations, and leading
tech industries and Internet service providers.
An ANTC venture that consumes much of Dave's time these days is the
Oregon Route Views Project, which provides free real-time information about
global routing to Internet operators worldwide. This project has proved so successful
and so useful in a variety of ways, that it is currently in the process of being
expanded to meet the demand.
Over the years, Dave has crisscrossed the globe many times as a presenter and facilitator at technical conferences and workshops. When he began to forget the name of his dog, he realized it was time to cut back on travel commitments. He's now more appreciative than ever of the time he spends at home with wife Susie, daughters Rebekka (14) and Emily (20), dog Mattie, and their three cats. The Meyers' son Andy (25) is a UO journalism graduate currently pursuing a writing career in Eugene.