Name: Will Tracz
Title: Senior Technical Staff Member
Company: Lockheed Martin Systems Integration - Owego
How I arrived at my present job (academic and other influences): I have always been interested in tracking the state of the art, so I have never stopped my education. This means taking over 3 dozen graduate level courses after starting this job, volunteering in various technical societies, as well as attending yearly conferences and workshop.
How I organize my day: Catch up on email (a never ending task). Go for a coffee walk to the cafeteria with co-workers. Read, write, talk on the phone .. the usual. Unfortunately most of my days seem to be on a plane. If I can, I exercise at lunchtime.
Amount of time spent working daily (at home and office): 9-10.
What I do to get myself thinking creatively: Go to a quite place
My problem-solving strategy: Visualize .. play out scenarios
What I do to relieve stress: Music .. prayer .. comedy .. DS9 and Voyager.
My hero, mentor, or person I most admire and why: David Parnas .. tell it like it is - an engineer, and Rick Adrian, a gentleman and leader.
What I do to mentor those who work for me: Keep the door open. Build confidence and encourage an atmosphere open to asking questions and not being afraid to make mistakes.
How a negative event changed my life in a positive way: My struggle to complete my Ph.D. gave me a deeper appreciation of learning, research and scholarship.
One event or decision in my life I wish I could go back and change: I should have thrown a forward 2 and a half somersault tuck position instead of a back 1 and a half somersault with a half twist at the state collegiate swimming and diving championship my senior year in college.. the bottom line was my coach didn't care and I should have taken the matters into my own hands.
What values are the most important to me and what I value in others: Respect, responsibility, integrity, honor, enthusiasm. Life is hard, and then you die, so you might as well enjoy it along the way.
What inspires, motivates, or gets me excited about my job on a daily basis: The people that I meet.
Biography: Received Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA in 1997 after an MS in Computer and Electrical Engineering and another in Computer Science. His BA was in Mathematics. He is a member of the RIT Software Engineering Advisory Board, editor of the ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes since 1994, and chairman of the International Conference on Software Engineering to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2002. He's also published numerous articles, and some are available at http://www.owego.com/~tracz. In addition to an IBM Outstanding Achievement Award, he has a patent-- US Patent 5,634,121 "System for Identifying and Linking Domain Information using a Parsing Process to Identity Keywords and Phrases" May 27, 1997.