Joe Cheng

Software engineer on RStudio, a full-featured open source IDE for the R programming language for statistics. RStudio can be run as either a web application (HTML5-based interface), or as a desktop application (the web-based interface hosted locally and run in an embedded browser).

After Microsoft acquired Onfolio, I spent three and a half years working there. During most of that time I worked as a Senior Developer on Windows Live Writer, a sophisticated but friendly desktop blog editing program that has a rabid following among bloggers. I was recognized for my contributions with three Gold Star Awards in as many years. Writer is written primarily in C#.

From September 2008 until my departure, I served as the Development Lead for Writer. I managed our small team of developers and charted the direction of the product, while continuing to contribute code.

Onfolio was a small startup (about eight employees) founded and funded by J.J. Allaire. Our product was a browser add-in for Internet Explorer and Firefox that helped people collect, organize, and share anything they found on the web. It was acquired by Microsoft in February 2006.

I designed and implemented Onfolio's back-end, the key component of which was a fast, scalable, flexible object storage subsystem. I wrote Onfolio's Firefox extension, and implemented bidirectional sync with EndNote. I also implemented many end-user features.

In my spare time, I created a robust open-source e-mail parsing library in Java—something that did not exist in 2004, believe it or not. This library ended up being picked up by the Apache Software Foundation for their open-source mail server, and has found its way into Google's Android phone operating system.

Feeds Developer (7/02–12/02): Built highly performant, scalable, and flexible Java software to parse millions of rows of transaction data sent to Upromise by some of the nation's largest retailers. Optimized performance through heavy use of multithreading. Application Developer (1/02–7/02): Developed and maintained J2EE components to support Upromise website, using BEA WebLogic and Oracle. Upromise was acquired by Sallie Mae in 2006.

Lead Web Developer and Usability Designer at an online exchange for fixed income securities. Designed interface and led front-end development of the Visible Marketplace, a scalable and robust exchange platform (over $4 billion transacted in first six months) based on Java/J2EE (BEA WebLogic). Served as Technical Lead on multiple projects, overseeing technical design decisions and managing development milestones. Visible Markets joined the deadpool in 2001.

As a hobby, I created and maintained one of the most widely acclaimed Adobe Photoshop resources on the web. Despite its highly specific target audience, the Action XChange received over a million page views (or 120,000 unique visitors) per month. I sold the site to Adobe in June 2001 and they eventually relaunched it as Adobe Studio Exchange.

While a student at MIT, I designed, developed, and deployed web applications for a variety of corporate clients, including an IBM-owned chemical consulting company (content management system), a venture capital firm (investor management tool), and dot-com startups (auction system, others).

Web design and application development for the makers of the HomeSite HTML editor and ColdFusion web application development system. Designed and built an online store, a content management system, and a web-based e-mail client as example applications to ship with ColdFusion. Invented static caching techniques—quite novel for 1998—that became part of the ColdFusion platform. Created a bug tracking system that was used internally. Allaire went public in 1999, and was acquired by Macromedia in 2001.

Bachelors in Management Science from the Sloan School of Management, specializing in Information Technology. Served as webmaster for the Class of 2000 and for the Sloan Undergraduate Management Association.

Java, C#/.NET, C/C++, Ruby, PHP, Python; MySQL, Oracle; Photoshop, InDesign; HTML, JavaScript; Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Rails, CodeIgniter, Windows Forms.

Photography, digital storytelling, HIV/AIDS.