Passionate and proactive developer with strong communication skills. Second author of the Best Paper winner at the International Conference on User Interfaces 2010 and Technology Consultant for Quad Connect, which recently won first place student-venture at the Olin Cup Entrepreneurship Competition.
Research in Human Computer Interaction and entrepreneurial experience have developed an intuition for user needs and a drive for translating innovative ideas into tangible business proposals. Consistently exhibits leadership qualities and has been asked by various community organizations and start-up companies to speak on technology and the web.
Public speaking expertise was recognized at Washington University in St. Louis in 2006 where Micah was chosen as an Art Scholar student speaker for donors and in 2010 when he represented Wash U’s ACM chapter in promoting computer science at WUSTL’s Women in Engineering Day.
Writing skills were recognized his junior year when he was awarded an outstanding achievement award in the computer science department, in part based on his Semantic Web book proposal for “Pages with Purpose – The New Paradigm in Web Design”. Micah has recently joined authors from around the globe to collaborate on a related book, “Linked Data for Web Developers”, which is currently in production with Manning Publications.
Micah recently finished a 6-month fellowship at DERI – Galway, pursuing research in Semantic Web technologies and their applications in business. While there, he built a sustainability platform for small-medium size enterprises with the Green and Sustainable IT unit. In particular, he was lead developer on the Ajax-enabled front-end.
When he’s not programming, Micah pursues acting in both straight plays and musicals. He recently performed in Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses at Washington University in St. Louis. Past credits include Tateh in Ragtime and Motel in Fiddler on the Roof.
Publications
- Co-Author of Linked Data for Web Developers with Manning Publications (expected Fall 2011)
- Edward Curry, Souleiman Hasan, Umair ul Hassan, Micah Herstand, and Sean O’Riain. “An Entity-Centric Approach to Green Information Systems.” European Conference on Information Systems (2011).
- Paul Gross, Micah Herstand, Jordana Hodges, and Caitlin Kelleher. “A Code Reuse Interface for Non-Programmer Middle School Students.” International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (2010).
Awards and Honors
- Presented The Next Decade in Web Design at the 2011 STL UX Conference
- Presented Relationships Matter: What’s Important on, in, and to the Web at Ignite Galway
- Six-Month Research Fellowship with DERI Galway – The largest Semantic Web research institute in the world.
- First Place Student-Venture for Quad Connect at the Olin Cup Competition
- Best Paper Winner at IUI 2010 for A Code Reuse Interface for Non-Programmer Middle School Students
- Participant at MIT‘s Linked Data IAP 2010 with Tim Berners-Lee
- 2009 Boeing Scholar at Washington University in St. Louis
- August 2009 Panelist with the St. Louis Social Media Club on the Evolution of the Web
- June 2009 Guest Speaker on Semantic Web Design at St. Louis IxDA
- Spring 2009 Undergraduate Departmental Award for Excellence
- 2006 Mary Louise Stone Art Scholar at Washington University in St. Louis
Programming and Software Experience
- Frontend Web: XHTML, CSS, Javascript, Google Web Toolkit, Flash with Actionscript, RDFa
- Backend Web: PHP/MySQL, Perl, Python, RDF, XML
- General Development: Java, C++
- Familiar with Unix platform, Linux, and Bash scripting
- Experienced in Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, Apple iLife, and
Apple iWork - Comfortable on Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX
Education
- Washington University in St. Louis, Computer Science (’12, expected)
- Graduated James Madison Memorial High School in 2006 with high honors
Web Experience
- Web Developer at Washington University in St. Louis
- Working in the IS&T department, helping with UI/UX improvements, Sharepoint updates, and help documentation.
Pages with Purpose: The New Paradigm in Web Design
- Wrote a book proposal on Semantic Web Design that proposes a new model for the web development process. It focuses on layering the development of web applications in a similar fashion to the infrastructure of the Internet. Research for this book has included the areas of network and Internet infrastructure such as the OSI and TCP/IP models; traditional web technologies such as HTTP and XHTML; Semantic Technologies such as RDF and SPARQL; and emerging fields like Information Architecture and Interaction Design.
Quad Connect
- Technology Consultant for Quad Connect, a student-run startup company at Washington University in St. Louis. Quad Connect aims to improve campus communities by helping students promote and discover campus events timely and efficiently. Extensive work on product and brand development. Completed a prototype with Human Computer Interaction students using Google Web Toolkit 2.0.
Web Design for AriHerstand.com and SixSpices.com
- AriHerstand.com is a singer/songwriter’s website filled with dynamic and media-heavy content. It pulls show data from ArtistData.com and tweets from Twitter. Blogs and videos are posted by the artist.
- SixSpices.com is an Indian culinary artist’s flash-based website, which is heavy on Actionscript programming to allow quick updates of dynamic content.
