René Doursat
 PhD, Habil.

Research Scientist & Fmr. Director

Complex Systems Institute, Paris Ile-de-France (ISC-PIF)
French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

Research Unit UPS3611

113, rue Nationale
75013 Paris, France
email: rene.doursatiscpif.fr

Books

Edited Proceedings







Home Page
Research
Teaching
Publications
Activities, Grants
Industry
   • Akheron
   • BIOwulf Genomics
   • RedCart.com
   • Neuron Data
Education, Career

Industry
Technological professional knowledge, 1995–2004
  • 9-year professional software development experience across multiple technologies and platforms
  • Expertise in object-oriented design methodology and application development in Java and J2EE, including Servlets/JSP, EJB, JDBC/SQL, Threads, RMI, JCE, Security, JNI, JFC/Swing, etc.
  • Extensive experience in Web & object distribution technologies: HTTP, HTML/XML, CORBA/IDL, Messaging
  • Project experience with various development frameworks and tools: J2EE SDK, Visual Studio, Apache, Allaire JRun, Watershed ROF, Persistence PowerTier, Symantec VisualCafe, IONA Orbix, IBM MQSeries, MATLAB, LabVIEW, etc.
  • Main languages: Java, C++/C (in the past: Objective-C, Pascal, Fortran, Basic)
  • Main platforms: Windows, UNIX (Linux, Solaris)
  • Personally produced between 20,000 and 45,000 lines of enterprise code per year.
8.  Akheron Technologies
Chief Engineer, Palo Alto, California, 3/2002–8/2004  
Akheron (early-stage start-up) built innovative network security technology extending traditional firewall protection (traffic analysis & filtering) to the application layer, e.g. instant messaging (IM) and peer-to-peer.
Designed and developed a suite of Java applications to monitor, archive and display IM traffic, based on a complex thread-pooled, multi-client architecture using the Jabber protocol (40,000 lines of code). Also contributed to Akheron's proprietary High-Bandwidth Transparent Vectoring (HBTV) technology. Co-authored or assisted writing four patent applications.
7.  BIOwulf Genomics
Senior Software Architect, Berkeley, California, 11/2000–2/2002  
BIOwulf (early-stage start-up, ended 2/2002), focused on machine learning methods, especially support vector machines (SVMs), for genomic, proteomic and medical data analysis.
At the company's start, was hired to integrate math and engineering by designing a system to deliver productized SVM algorithmic methods. Created an online application service provider (ASP), the "Discovery Platform", to centralize and streamline multiple data processing chains: (a) users upload raw input data; (b) math analysts custom-tailor optimal classification methods and deploy them as "numerical engines" (componentware of the system); (c) users download output results. Single-handedly designed and built the entire J2EE-based system, including a back-end numerical computation server (JNI over Matlab). Collaborated with SVM co-inventor Isabelle Guyon. Co-authored one patent.
6.  RedCart.com
Senior Software Engineer & Architect, San Francisco, California, 7/1999–11/2000  
RedCart (early/mid-stage start-up, ended in 12/2000), provided e-commerce technology as an application service provider (ASP) to consumer web portal sites. Its "Universal Shopping" technology enabled transactions across multiple online merchants through a single virtual shopping cart account.
Joined at an early stage and played a major role in the design and development of the system. Single-handedly created and implemented the automatic checkout functionality across two coupled servers:
  • A J2EE front-end: Wrote a multi-tier, multi-threaded checkout engine in Java (EJB, Servlets, JSP).
  • An Apache-based proxy: Wrote an HTTP "bot" (agent) module in C automating the navigation of merchant sites through pluggable "wrappers" (merchant-specialized software components analogous to drivers). To streamline the massive development of wrapper code, created an original macro script in C containing 120 bot navigation commands and trained groups of programmers in its use.
Helped supervise and provide technical leadership to the engineering team, in collaboration with the CTO and VP of Engineering. Led or contributed to code reviews for most of the system.
5.  Neuron Data
Senior Software Engineer, Mountain View, California, 8/1998–7/1999
Software Engineer, Research & Development, Paris, France, 4/1995–7/1998  
Neuron Data (founded in 1985, IPO in 2000 as Blaze Software, followed by several buyouts and mergers) built market-leading high-end application development tools for Fortune 500 customers.
Hired to work directly with the Chief Software Architect on new projects. Created major new features, core modules and prototypes of products from scratch. For the "Advisor" product, a suite of tools for business rules management (business rules are componentware expert systems based on English-like scripts):
  • Developed the first prototype of Advisor's rules engine, based on the RETE search algorithm.
  • Coded various lexical and syntactical parsers for an English-like 4GL script compiler.
  • Created the complete initial GUI which was further developed by the whole engineering team.
  • Wrote multiple client/server demos using CORBA, RMI, HTTP, and MQSeries.
For "Open Interface", a cross-platform GUI builder (precursor of IDE tools like Visual Basic or Delphi):
  • Created a C/C++ code generation engine, automatically resynchronizing GUI and text modifications. Invented a set of "annotations" (special comments) inserted in the code. Wrote the user manual.