CV

Passionate and proactive developer, empathic communicator, curious learner.

Co-author on published conference paper in Information Systems and award-winning paper in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Co-founded Quad Connect, which won the 2010 student Olin Cup Entrepreneurship Competition.

Research in HCI 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 (WUSTL) in 2006 when 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.

As a student, Micah was recognized his junior year at WUSTL with both a Boeing scholarship and an outstanding achievement award in computer science for his passion and engagement in classes, ambitious book proposal for ‘Pages with Purpose: The New Paradigm in Web Design’; and his critical thinking in HCI research with the Looking Glass Lab.

Micah recently finished a 6-month fellowship at DERI – Galway, pursuing research in Semantic Web technologies and their applications in business.

When he’s not programming, Micah writes music, sings in the Mosaic Whispers a cappella group, and acts in both plays and musicals. Past theatre credits include Jamie Wellerstein in The Last Five Years, Cheshire Cat in Alice, Ceyx/Vertumnus in Metamorphoses, Tateh in Ragtime, and Motel in Fiddler on the Roof – all at Washington University in St. Louis.

Work Experience

• User Experience Developer at Wisconsin State Courts
  • I am on the CCAP3 team. We develop web applications for court operations, including the calendar for all the judges in the state as well as jury management tools. I primarily develop in Scala, with front-end work making use of HTML5 (all courthouses in the state use the latest version of Chrome).
• User Experience Developer at AT&T
  • I was on the tSpace team. They develop the AT&T employee social network, which helps their 300,000+ employees and contractors connect and collaborate on business and social initiatives. I helped them integrate tSpace into AT&T’s other online initiatives in order to streamline employee communication.
    Features that I have built from scratch – using Java, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS – have been used by tens of thousands of unique visitors and have seen millions of requests.
• Senior Web Developer for Proud Honeybee Productions (Ari’s Take, AriHerstand.com, among others)
  • Designed and developed desktop and mobile websites using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL
  • Built the Ari’s Take blog from scratch, with a custom back-end for artist updates
  • Setup cron jobs with PHP scripts for pulling event data from the ArtistData API
  • Built multiple custom Tumblr themes for artist and tour blogs
• Web Developer at Washington University in St. Louis (Spring 2011-Fall 2011)
  • Designed prototypes for Web apps using HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Debugged Perl scripts. Resident JavaScript expert. Wrote public-facing help pages for Web apps. Wrote internal white paper on mobile Web strategy and JavaScript. Implemented MS InfoPath forms on Sharepoint.
• Quad Connect (Spring 2009-Spring 2010)
  • Co-Founder of Quad Connect, a student-run start-up 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.

Publications

• Co-Author of Linked Data for Web Developers with Manning Publications (coming soon)
• 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).

Presentations, 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: (X)HTML, CSS, JavaScript (Ajax/jQuery/Dojo), Google Web Toolkit, Flash with Actionscript, RDFa/Microdata/Microformats
• Backend Web: PHP/MySQL, Perl, Python, RDF, XML
• General Development: Java, C++
• Familiar with Unix platform, Linux, Bash scripting, and Cronjobs
• 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 (’13, expected)
• Graduated James Madison Memorial High School in 2006 with high honors