Igor Polk
Professional History

20 years of software engineering, 3 years of image processing and analysis, 3 years of electrical engineering, 2 years in biomedical industry.

What happened at the previous job inspired me to try some ideas I was hoping to implement one day. I have developed a concept of Virtual Walking Tour predating Google's Street View. That included designing and programming the walking tour editing software; developing interactive Java applets with animation to present walking photo tours on the Web and in a stand-alone version; photography and content design work; developing a Web site for on-line presentation, a Web-shop. Performing search engine promotion. Achieved 1st place on Google on "San Francisco pictures" search. Produced CD products: "San Francisco Virtual Tour", "Alcatraz Virtual Tour", "Las Vegas Boulevard Virtual Tour". Also I researched the concept of parallax effect stereo. Java, C++, HTML, MS Visual Studio, Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop.

Also I have developed a music score generator with MusicXML data format, diagrams in this guitar book http://www.virtuar.com/guitar/ were developed with it. I am an author of this book about a new method of note representation targeting productive sight-reading training for guitarists.

I was able to pursue my old artistic call for tango dancing instruction. I was able to develop a system of dance description and establish a school. This activity on the cross roads of mathematics, physics, and control, rather than entertainment. Six mathematical models work together to describe this remarkable activity. That includes investigation and modeling of human body dance movements which are adequate.. This is the most complex project in my life spanning 10 years of continuous research and practice. I conduct tango classes in Palo Alto.

On the side, as a consultant I have implemented a number of projects for A&B Software [www.ab-soft.com] related to image analysis in C++ working with video cameras and number crunching programs with html reporting for scientific modeling. Worked in VS 2008, VS 2005, Visual Studio 6.0. Work included improvements to "Image Warp" Image Analysis software [www.imagewarp.com]; support for Hamamatsu x-ray line cameras; wavefront image analysis and feature -detection algorithms; detection and segmentation of regular patterns algorithms, video-file reading support for GigE-supporting products utilizing DirectShow support for video.

Was responsible for an Image Analysis and scan input production part of the software. Designed and implemented interactive modules graphically representing production and genomic information. No 3D. Implemented some algorithms of pattern recognition, numerical statistical algorithms. Participated in design of other modules. Updated the program to work with a new database schema. Provided software support for research in statistical improvement of the quality of the output data. Incorporated TCL interpreter in the product. Incorporated a third -party library to support PDF printing. Designed the next version of the image analysis product capable of the whole human genome processing (100,000 genes) and helped contractors to implement it.

VS C++, MS Windows, MFC, STL, Image Analysis, TCL
Documenting, Debugging, Testing, Designing, Coding, Coordinating

It was said that I have excellent problem solving skills, innovative thinking, came with good design and test strategies, develop maintainable and bug free code, quick learner, team worker always willing to help. Strong verbal and written skills.

Incyte Genomics has closed our division right when we were getting ready to come to the market with new technologies to analyze the whole human genome on industrial scale.

I was responsible for design and implementation of the real-time control and data collection program for a complex high-speed machine for hard drive industry. It was the first program in the industry implemented on Windows NT with multithreading, and performed well. The program reads a number of complex system and data files, assembles the sequence of control algorithms, performs actions in automatic and manual modes, reacts to interrupts, acquires data from hardware, processes and stores data, collects statistics, informs operators about actions, reflects hardware parameters and data, performs error handling, cancel and abort functionality. State machine approach and extensive use of automatic test drivers where each algorithm was thoroughly tested was used. MFC and ActiveX was used in design and implementation of GUI. Another part was the use of STL to implement data objects and perform efficient collection and pattern recognition on acquired data. Where efficient, templates and C++ features like inheritance and polymorphism where used. Direct Port I/O in NT device driver implementation. Adopted TCL engine for use as an interactive runtime debugging and tracing tool.

For a year the company founders were involved into a lawsuit with their previous company. And they lost. They were forced to stop operation. As the result I had to look for a new opportunity.

My first US job. I had very limited Windows3.1 and no Mac experience and right from the beginning I had to work with the complex cross-platform multimedia code. I still love MPW! As the result I redesigned and implemented the next generation of in-house cross platform framework libraries used in 30+ programs. The libraries include application control support; interactivity; multiple windows; animation; movies; I believe the winning approach I have chosen was emulation of MS Windows drawing mechanism, windows, and controls on Macintosh.

My first job. Immediately I was involved into computerized control of technological processes since no one else was able to do it. From the day one was responsible for functioning, repair of original design problems, and enhancement of the major control circuit of a large chemical plant. The plant, designed in and built by West Germany engineers (Hoechst) consisted of 4 production lines in the building 300ft long and 4 stories high. Control circuits included 6 micro-processor-based computers and numerous control electronics including sensors. I have redesigned original main program for TI-550 to be more adaptable to chemical process parameters and controllable by human operators, and performed a replacement. Trained on "Art of Electronics" was able to repair and instruct how to repair various electronics devices often without any documentation (schemas) available. The plant has caught the fire. Half of it burned! It happens that a week before that I had repaired a registration computer which was turned off due to a design mistake which prevented its normal operation. The first thing what my boss did: he came to the control room and picked up the printout. Later it served as a prove that the cause of fire was the problem with the equipment. Germans agreed to repair. Thus I have saved the company $80million.

Igor Polk: “A memory to read out and write a block of words via one memory access from a random address”
in 1992 IEEE 26-th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems & Computers.

A guitar book "Perfectly Aligning Guitar Frets and Strings with Notes on a Staff"

Tango website; Virtual Tour website