Dave Abercrombie — Resume

Dave Abercrombie Cupertino, CA 95014		http://dave.aber.us

Summary

As an engineer with over 20 years experience, I've worked with many technologies including imaging, compression, OCR, file exchange and standards, and system development. I've advanced technologies that produce a ten-fold reduction in file size, I've advanced OCR accuracy by roughly 25%, and I've implemented advanced research ideas in compression that turned into several multi-million dollar defense contracts. I seek challenges in image processing and algorithm development.

Electronics For Imaging — 7 years and 9 months - 4/04 to present

Staff engineer for UPDL team.

• Developed image processing path to accommodate print processing operations from scanner to printer, resulting in a copy-like functionality.
• Took ownership of PPML rip engine and extended it to be fully compliant with PODi graphics standard, making EFI an industry leader for PPML.
• Supported parallel processing engine for a multi-server print engine delivering over 2000 pages per minute.
• Currently the system developer for Adobe's PDF rip engine — the next generation core for the flagship product.

Consulting — 1+ years - 12/02 to 4/04

• Implemented a library to automatically stitch together images in a panorama sequence for ImageDock.
• Web site administrator for over a dozen domains. Developed dynamic web content, personal sites, spam filtering tools, etc.

Xerox & Scansoft — 7 years - 10/95 to 12/02 in Palo Alto, CA

I was a key contributor to several programs that brought MRC, JBIG2, and TIFF-FX into Xerox & Scansoft products. When folded together, these technologies produce files roughly ten times smaller in size compare to previous methods.
I worked on several projects including Pagis Pro, TextBridge, FlowPort II, and libraries reused across organizations. Details include:

• Developed the proprietary file format and I/O library for storing MRC documents with JBIG2 compression.
• Aligned the format with an emerging standard - TIFF-FX.
• Enhanced several document processing tools such as: automated image enhancement, photograph detection, and Hierarchical Vector Quantization.
• I made dramatic improvements in the algorithms for detecting table cells.
• Architected and implemented a conversion pipeline to generate multiple output renditions such as PDF, TIFF, and TIFF-FX while minimizing the memory and resources used for conversion.
• As a member of a central organization to Xerox, I've made MRC, JBIG2, TIFF, TIFF-FX and PDF technologies available to all Xerox divisions, under a central open-source system. As such, I worked with several organizations to realize this goal.

Caere Corporation — 3 1/2 years - 1/92 to 10/95 in Los Gatos, CA

As an OCR expert, I helped create new and innovative ways to improve the OCR accuracy of the flagship product. While making improvements, I took the initiative to develop accuracy measurement tools. These tools helped identify inaccuracies reported by UNLV in their annual OCR accuracy contest, and have been the gauge for improvements made by other engineers.I estimate my contribution to improvments in OCR accuracy to affect approximately 25% fewer OCR errors overall. On recognition of fax characters, I was able to achieve an OCR accuracy gain from about 75% to about 90%.
My primary projects for OCR improvement were:

• Character and Word error measurements, and regression testing.
• Word-based character recognition using dictionaries and trigrams.
• Neural net integration and tuning.
• X-window tools for tracking OCR decisions.
• Automatic page orientation.
• X-window/Motif editor.

Sperry/Unisys/Paramax — 6+ years - 8/85 to 1/92 in Salt Lake City, UT

I was the primary developer for a small team in the Advanced Technology Department that researched data compression algorithms for image data. We led some of the more advanced methods of applying a technique called Vector Quantization for image compression, and brought our ideas to hardware prototypes, now key in bringing in awards on several multi-million dollar contracts.
My notable projects:

• Implemented several compression algorithms for research: Adaptive Huffman, Lempel-Ziv Welch, Arithmetic Coding, and Vector Quantization (VQ).
• Tree search methods for VQ. Focused on non-uniform binary trees.
• Codebook design research.
• Classified VQ, for compression of bank check images.
• Bread-board prototypes for real-time video compression using VQ. Interfaced custom boards via software.
• Encryption algorithms complimentary to VQ.

I held a confidential security clearance.

Education

I have a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Utah, and emphasized signal processing, stochastic processes, and computer design. My Senior Thesis was titled Extension to the Human Visual Model.

I have worked with: Windows, Linux, UNIX, C, C++, CSH, Apple Basic, Perl, PHP, FORTRAN, assembly, etc. See expanded details of my work at http://dave.aber.us/jobhistory.