Curriculum Vitae Francis Dierick

Work Experience Summary

Accomplished web developer with over 10 years of experience in copywriting, programming and usability engineering predominantly using open-source technologies. Extensive experience working on research-oriented tasks in both academic and commercial environments.

Current Work Situation

As a research developer in the Theseus program I am responsible for conceiving and implementing novel web-based user interfaces. Currently my academic interests lie in development of 'Games with a Purpose', visualization of graph data, agile development methods and lightweight user-friendly Web 2.0 user interfaces.

I'm applying my skills gained in the bioinformatics world to managing and visualizing the large datasets used in Semantic Web applications.

I like to write simple, semantic, powerful web applications on the LAMP stack using lightweight development frameworks such as Zend, Django or Rails. In a perfect world, I develop on OSX and deploy in the distributed computing cloud.

I'm a member of the Usability Professionals Association and following a one-year course on usability at Artop / Humboldt University Berlin.

Recommendation

Dr. Christian Maass, Head of Research, Lycos Europe: "It was not uncommon to bring projects to Francis that I would usually reserve for team managers. I had every confidence in his abilities and knew that I could entrust him with difficult tasks with minimal, if any, supervision."

Publications

• Andreas Heß, Christian Maaß, Francis Dierick (2008) From Web 2.0 to the Semantic Web: A Semi-Automated Approach. CISWeb Workshop at ESWC 2008
• Francis Dierick, Philipp Dopichaj, Uwe Fleischer, Andreas Heß, Andre Skusa and Christian Maaß (2008) Playful Validation of Automatically Extracted Data. Workshop "Nutzerinteraktion im Social Semantic Web" at "Mensch und Computer" conference.
• Sterck, L., Rombauts, S., Fawcett, J., Lin, Y.-C., Robbens, S., Wuyts, J., Dierick, F., Rouzé, P., Van de Peer, Y. (2007) Eukaryotic Genome Annotation. IUAP-BioMAGNET Kick-off meeting, 2007 (Poster)
• Rombauts, S., Sterck, L., Dierick, F., Robbens, S., Wuyts, J., Schiex, T., Rouzé, P., Van de Peer, Y. (2006) Eukaryote Genome annotation at the Plant Systems Biology department. BBC 2006, VIB-seminar 2006 (Poster)

Daytime work

• Lycos Europe Research July 2007 - ... Web Development and UI Research
• VIB (Plant Systems Biology and Evolutionary Genomics) - Ghent July 2003 - June 2007 Web and database development
• Emerge.be - Macline November 2001 - June 2003 Web development
• Emerge.be - Shop on the Net (Brussels) July 2000 - November 2001 Web development
• Philips Speech Processing (Brussels / Vienna) January 1999 - November 1999 3rd Line Speech Technology Support
• DVH bvba (Antwerp) July 1998 - November 1998 Web development
• DVH bvba (Antwerp) February 1998 - July 1998 Freelance Web development

Nighttime work

• Peakr.net 2007 Social News for climbers
• Climbing.about.com September 2000 - May 2001 Web Editor and Writer
• Freeclimbing.com January 1999 - January 2001 Search engine development

Education

• 1997-1998: Communication Sciences, Egon - Ghent
• 1996-1997: Communication Sciences, Egon - Ghent
• 1995-1996: Roman Languages, University of Namur
• 1989-1995: Secundary High School: Latin Modern Languages

Additional Education

• Mandarin Chinese (Evening Course: 2006)
• Photography (2000)
• Interviewing Techniques (Evening Course: 1998)
• Multimedia (Evening Course: 1999)

Knowledge of languages

• Dutch: mother tongue
• English: Good
• French: Good
• German: Passive understanding
• Mandarin Chinese: Very limited understanding, will probably continue learning forever

Self-Education

• Genomics: annotation systems, visualization systems, good basic understanding of genetics for bioinformatics application development.
• Operating Systems: Mac OSX, Linux
• Databases: Filemaker Pro, 4D, MySQL
• Programming languages: ASP, Lasso, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, Java, *nix shell
• Scripting Languages: Javascript, VBscript
• Markup languages: HTML, XML, MXML, YAML
• Text editors: BBedit, Vi, Nedit, TextMate
• Pattern Recognition: grep
• Image Processing: Photoshop, Fireworks
• Networking: DNS, DHCP, administration of mail and web servers (Apache, Webstar)
• Lamp (Linux-Apache-MysQL-Perl/PHP) & Xamp (OSX-Apache-Mysql-Perl /PHP)
• OSX Server & Client in Web Development environments

Honors and Activities

• I like challenges. I started skydiving and got my A License in 3 months. I've been climbing all over the world (USA, Canada, France, Norway, China, ...) and filmed some of my exploits. I've been ice climbing since 2003 and climbed classics like Weeping Wall in Canada. I've been rock climbing since 1990 and bouldered up to 8a, mostly in Fontainebleau, France.
• I like to build things. As a pet project, I built a rock climbing specific search engine and crawler in 1997. (freeclimbing.com) I wrote climbing-related article for About.com at night during the Internet bubble. I built a climbing-related social news site (peakr.net) to polish my Web 2.0 coding skills in 2007.
• I like beautiful things. Since I couldn't draw I studied photography at the Royal Academy of Ghent. I still can't draw but I enjoy the minimalism found in good typography, writing and information design. One day I'll write a book.