A Wonderful Journey into the
World of Computers

ALM in IT Graduates and Their Software Projects

After four years, the Master of Liberal Arts in Information Technology (ALM in IT) Program is proving to be a place where students from many parts of the world, and from varied backgrounds, can come to learn the theory and practice of building complex software systems. "I am very proud of our graduating students' accomplishments," stated Dr. Henry H. Leitner, assistant dean of information technology for Harvard's Division of Continuing Education, and a senior lecturer on computer science. "It is especially gratifying to witness the depth and breadth of their final projects, each of which is the design and implementation of a complex piece of software. Some of these student projects literally consist of thousands of lines of code, much of it written in a very elegant and professional fashion." The seven individuals who graduated this June were born and raised in such diverse places as India, Jordan, Iran, and China (as well as the United States), and each of them produced a final software project that either solves a practical problem or serves as an educational tool.

Rakhi Sharma, ALM '02

Rakhi Sharma described her birthplace of Jaipur, in India, as "one of the most beautiful cities in all of India, a city that earns its nickname from the beautiful sandstone palaces, temples, and monuments that litter its landscape."

It was there that Sharma, from a very early age, would listen to her father speak about issues related to accounting, interest rates, and the regional economy. As a result, Sharma became very interested in commerce, which she chose as her undergraduate major (or "primary stream," as it is called in India). She chose computer science as her minor because it appeared that in a very short time nearly all aspects of commercial activity would be profoundly affected by computing technology.

While still in college, Sharma worked for a small, private computer firm that undertook projects for the banking industry. When she discovered the Extension School's ALM in IT Program shortly after moving to the Boston area in 1998, Sharma decided to look actively at continuing her education in computer science.

Her final project--the implementation of an expense management tool for small businesses--is a very clever design that blends a number of client-side and server-side technologies, allowing users to access and update an expense report database via the Web, or even via a wireless phone.

Two other final projects are also practical applications of distributed computing. Mohammed Abuzaid, who was born and raised in Amman, Jordan, completed work that bridges the gap between what appears to be incompatible technologies--CORBA and XML. Abuzaid's project is the design and implementation of a "gateway" that allows XML-based clients to communicate seamlessly with CORBA services. His gateway toolkit allows integrated systems to be developed, regardless of their hardware platform or the programming language in which they were written. Abuzaid, who works as a software engineer for Parametric Technologies Corporation, got his start in computing in the seventh grade when he was exposed to the Logo programming language.

Hossein Farkhondehpour, ALM '02

Hossein Farkhondehpour, who was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, became interested in electronics and circuit design at an early age and graduated from high school as the top student in electronics. During college, he was employed by local companies as a programmer and later worked at Shamsipour College, where he developed a student enrollment and course registration system for the school. After moving to the US in 1996, Farkhondehpour began work as a senior consultant with Keane, Inc., where he acquired a great deal of experience in internet applications. His final project, StockPad, is designed for Windows CE-based "pocket PC" devices; using an internet connection, it has the ability to keep track of multiple stock market portfolios for each user, charting and updating stock prices with sell or buy warnings, based on alerts set by the user.

Dominic Brown, ALM '02

Dominic Brown, who was born in Washington, DC, but raised in the Boston area, found himself working at his mother's Watertown restaurant while in high school. Inspired by the good food and rave reviews Mary Brown's Restaurant was receiving in the local press, Brown learned to market products such as quiche and lasagna to small supermarkets and local natural food stores.

This led eventually to his starting a catering business that specialized in Cajun food and then expanding into a major supplier of fresh, all-natural soups to supermarket chains throughout New England and New York City. Soon Brown had 200 accounts and was managing a team of truck drivers, a food manufacturing plant, and a software system that helped keep track of it all.

To grow the business further required an infusion of venture capital; but much to his dismay, Brown discovered that "venture capitalists were all excited about high tech, not food. I soon began to share their views." So he sold his business with the intent of going into the software industry.

After taking some time off to complete his undergraduate degree, Brown took a job with a local high-tech company, making the switch from soup to software. After a few years, however, he felt that in order to grow within the industry and satisfy his own curiosity, he needed a deeper understanding of how hardware and software systems worked. He joined the ALM in IT Program and managed to complete his first four courses in one semester. His final project, a "route sales handheld computer," allows an organization engaged in the distribution and sales of retail consumer products to provide an efficient means of communication between its central office and remote sales force in real time.

Martin Frenzel, ALM '02

Martin Frenzel grew up with eight siblings in a small, rural village in upstate New York. Soon after earning an undergraduate degree in civil engineering at Duke University, he came to the Boston area to begin work in his field. "Unfortunately," stated Frenzel, "my visions were crazed and my job was numbingly boring. Instead of solving problems and seeing things get built, I was crunching numbers and making drawings. Although these are essential parts of the civil engineering process, they were too sterile and redundant for my creative side."

And then something happened that Frenzel described as "one of those brilliantly fortuitous accidents of chance." The computer network engineer at his firm quit, and he volunteered to pick up the responsibility. With little formal knowledge of computer networks, he signed up for Leonard Evenchik's course, CSCI E-131b Communication Protocols and Internet Architectures, in the fall of 1999, and "unknowingly started on a wonderful journey into the world of computers."

Four courses later, he decided to switch jobs from civil engineering to computer science and used the ALM in IT Program as his vehicle for doing so. Dr. Joseph Marks, lecturer in Extension and director of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, described Frenzel's final project as a huge success.

Marks, who served as Frenzel's research supervisor, was so impressed by the work that he co-authored a paper with Frenzel and submitted it for publication in Interactions magazine. The project involved the design and implementation of an Application Programming Interface (API) for a real-time game that was the foundation of a user-interface design competition sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery. Participants in the competition were encouraged to develop original user-interface techniques and/or devices; an analysis of the winning entries was made to determine their advantages over the others and to extract general design principles that may be useful for future user interfaces.

Elaine Fortin, ALM '02

The remaining two projects are in the realm of educational software. Elaine Fortin, who has spent 29 years in the field of information technology as a consultant, systems analyst, and website developer, currently works at Harvard's Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, where she helps to process telemetry files from satellites. Her project deals with increasing student comprehension of electromagnetic radiation and spectroscopy, using text and two-dimensional images.

Her project consists of a website that enhances material found in Dr. Eric Chaisson's popular text on introductory astrophysics and uses two- and three-dimensional interactive graphical animations and text. All the cosmic images presented in Fortin's website were created from actual telemetry files that were created by both earth-based and satellite-based telescopes.

Rongliang Bai, ALM '02

The other educational project, completed by Rongliang Bai, serves a much younger but no less demanding audience. It consists of interactive software to teach four- to seven-year-old children how to tell time by learning to read the face of an analog clock. Bai, who was born and raised in China, tested his Windows-based application on actual children; the multimedia features of his program (such as sound-playing and flashing animation) help to keep a child's interest, while teaching a useful skill.

According to Dean Leitner, the ALM in IT Program has grown considerably in the last few years, from a handful of students to nearly 130 matriculated students. This growth leads Leitner to expect "quite a few more of these outstanding final projects in the coming years."