John Sloan, Ph.D.

Year Started with Spatial: 1998

Title: Senior Architect, ACIS Product Line

Hi, I'm John and I've been at Spatial quite a while now - in my time here I've worked on a wide variety of topics: Deformable Modeling, Healing, Stitching, Covering, Point Clouds, and probably a few that I can't remember.  (I still remember the first time I saw a piece of code and thought "who wrote this?" and then noticed my initials in the comment.)  Recently, I've been working on componentizing CGM; it's been very interesting to see the convergent evolution of ACIS' and CGM's approaches to solving the nasty problems inherent to solid modeling.  Solid modeling is actually my second career; my colleagues will be quick to tell you that I'm still a particle physicist at heart, with a thesis on String Theory and ten years of post-doctoral research using supercomputers to simulate the interactions between quarks and gluons.  One reason it was so easy for me to switch from physics to solid modeling was that I love programming; I suspect that many of my blog entries will be on the topics of object-oriented design and software engineering.  (Yes, I'm one of those geeks who actually writes programs at home for fun.)  Also on the fun front, I read tons of science fiction and am deep into Irish music - you can often find me at venues for one or the other.