Richard C Ballantyne

119 Winston Drive, Ithaca, NY 14850

Tel: 607-257-3200 x220 Email: richardballantyne@gmail.com


OBJECTIVE

To gain full-time employment at Goodrich as a Test Development Engineer.


EDUCATION

1/2004

Cornell University

Ithaca, NY


Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering


  • Designed, tested, and had fabricated a working Ethernet packet filter chip using Magic VLSI Editor and LVS.

  • Designed and simulated a MIPS compatible super-scalar 32-bit cached microprocessor using Verilog and CAST.

  • Fabricated a silicon wafer that contained a variety of test circuits.

  • Modified a portable CD player so that it could be voice-controlled.


EXPERIENCE

11/2004 - present

BinOptics, Inc.

Ithaca, NY


Staff Engineer


  • Designed, built, and automated 8 probe stations used to test semiconductor lasers (HCSELs & EELs) at the wafer level. These highly reliable systems each measure spectra, LIV, leakage and MPD current at a rate of 20000 devices per day. DUTs that do not meet customer specs are automatically marked as failures.

  • Designed, built, and automated 2 testing stations for packaged lasers (TO CAN & TOSA) at temperatures ranging from -40C to 100C.

  • Supported both the hardware and software of 13 other testing stations.

  • Built a robust MySQL, Samba, and Apache GNU/Linux server. Modified existing measurement software and created new software so that all measurements could be stored immediately on this SQL server. Wrote software that imported all old data into this new SQL database.

  • Created a database GUI allowing users to mine, plot, and statistically analyze over 150GB of measurement data. Oversaw the successful development of a web interface to this database.

  • Wrote software to model the creation of silicon structures (lenses & wedges) by evaporation. Designed and built a real-time motion control system to create these structures. Modelling software accurately predicted the shape of the fabricated structures.

  • Designed and built a mechanical and computerized system to measure laser diode farfield.

  • Created software to automate all reliability testing systems (800 burnin channels).

  • Acted as sole provider of IT services for the company. Performed all troubleshooting, upgrades, and repairs for 100 PCs, 6 servers, 40 IP phones, 12 switches, 7 routers, 4 copiers and 8 printers across 4 locations. Installed and configured all IT infrastructure from the ground up including a free-space optical link with an RF redundant path that provides a 100Mbps connection between two office buildings.



1/2004 - 10/2004

Consultant

Binghamton, NY


Independent Software Developer


  • Improved Gv4l video recording software by adding support for the DV format.

  • Wrote a hi-res spectrum visualization plugin for XMMS media player that utilized the OpenGL API.

  • Performed QA tests on the Reiser4 filesystem.

  • Made regular code contributions to other open source software projects including a Circle-based MUD. Setup and configured GNU/Linux servers that provided secure web hosting, FTP, NAT, firewall, DHCP, and email services.



12/2000 - 9/2001

Summit / Corning, Inc.

Corning, NY


Test Engineer


  • Pioneered a technique to accurately detect and measure defects in certain optical components (e.g. LCDs and prism gratings). These defects were invisible when viewed under an optical microscope.

  • Built measurement systems and wrote LabVIEW software to control them. These systems integrated equipment such as translation stages, optical switches, oscilloscopes, optical power meters, tunable lasers, polarization controllers, thermal chambers, couplers, attenuators, polarizers, NI-DAQ cards, and optical waveguides. The systems performed various reliability tests on Corning's optical networking devices like the Dynamic Spectrum Equalizer (DSE) and a prototype MEMS optical switch. They characterized the devices to ensure that customer specifications for reliability and performance were met. Device characterization entailed measuring insertion loss, PDL, PMD, pixel switching speed, crosstalk, inter-channel attenuation, channel ripple, channel width, and chromatic dispersion.



EXPERIENCE (continued)

11/2000 - 12/2000

Cornell University

Ithaca, NY

Systems Administrator


  • Maintained 100 workstations that were part of a mission critical network at the Cornell University Administration Building.



6/1999 - 3/2000

Cornell University

Ithaca, NY


Lab Researcher: Undergraduate Project


  • Performed experiments to better understand the plasma physics of Sulfur Lamps -- the world's most efficient high-powered light bulbs. Operated a spectrometer and created Matlab software to analyze measurement data.

  • Designed and built a working electronic delay generator in order to time spectrometer's CCD camera shutter.



6/1997 - 8/1997

AlliedSignal AMM

Sunnyvale, CA


Network Technician


  • Constructed parts of the intranet website for the AMM division of AlliedSignal. Wrote CGI (Perl) scripts to tabulate online survey results and generate reports in HTML.



6/1996 - 8/1996

EchoSpeech Corporation

Carpenteria, CA


Software Developer


  • Enhanced speech compression software by developing algorithms to simultaneously encode/decode multiple streams of speech. This feature was implemented in the GamePhones gaming software and enabled full duplex voice communication between two or more players.

  • Optimized speech compression algorithm by utilizing the floating-point processor.


SOFTWARE SKILLS

Skill Name

Current Level (1-10)

Max Level (1-10)



Experience




Skill Name

Current Level (1-10)

Max Level (1-10)



Experience

GNU/Linux/Unix

8

8

10 years


Assembly (MIPS)

5

8

1 year

LabVIEW

9

9

7 years


Magic VLSI Editor

5

9

1 year

Microsoft Windows & Office

(all including server)

9

9

13 years


Express PCB Editor

5

8

1 year

Microsoft Exchange

2000 & 2003

7

7

3 years


Minitab

5

7

1 year

Virtual Machines (VMWare, KVM, Bochs, Qemu)

7

7

6 years


Verilog

4

8

1 year

SQL

7

7

3 years


PSpice

4

7

1 year

HTML

4

7

10 years


CAST

5

7

1 year

C

4

7

3 years


Perl

2

6

1 year

Java

3

9

2 years


Matlab

3

6

1 year


REFERENCES

Dr. Malcolm Green

BinOptics Corporation

Tel: 607-257-3200 x241

mgreen@binoptics.com

Dr. Alfred Schremer

BinOptics Corporation

Tel: 607-257-3200 x228

schremer@binoptics.com

Mr. Craig Burdick

Summit Technology Services

Tel: 585-593-4241

craigb@summit-tsi.com


Mr. Allen Hunsaker

Computer Sciences Corporation

Tel: 623-533-4837

Cell: 602-436-9070

allenhunsaker@msn.com

Mr. Russ Madara

Avanex, Inc.

rwmada@gmail.com

Mr. John Belina

Cornell University

Tel: 607-255-2321

belina@ece.cornell.edu


ADDITIONAL INFO

Served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Portugal and West Africa for 2 years. Trilingual - Speak Portuguese and West African Creole.