DesignDroid - About us

About Us

This site was originally created as a learning supplement for our HTML workshops at the Science and Technology Conference 2000 at Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, as well as the html sessions for the summer Explorer Scout interns.

The Instructors:

Paula Wirth received a double-major in Art and Music from Rice University. While in school and after graduation, she worked as a commercial photographer. Later, she focused on science education, working as a medical illustrator, photographer, and web designer for University of Texas Medical School. Up until just recently, she worked as Creative Director and Webmaster for Computer Science at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose. Paula spends any available free time dancing, singing, drawing, hunting for antiques, dressing up (costumes and silly hats), reading books, climbing rocks, or crafting zany web pages (like this one.) Now she's back in school in Vancouver, B.C. Canada, learning all about Computer Science at UBC in the ARC program.

Anita Huang is a software engineer for "Cyberspace Technologies" at IBM Almaden. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Chemistry and is now pursuing a Master's degree in Computer Science at Mills College. Anita grew up in Toronto, Canada with 2 sisters and 1 brother. Before joining IBM, she rode her bike 3000 km from Amsterdam, Holland to Tangier, Morocco, where she lived for 1 year. Anita's current research interests include XML, web accessibility, and web search technologies. On her spare time, she enjoys reading novels, riding her bike, watching movies, and just hanging out.

Tom Diola is a Senior Lab Specialist working in the Recording Physics Department at IBM Almaden. He graduated with a Degree in Electronics from Laney College in Oakland, California. He was born in Vallejo California and grew up in Alameda California with 5 Brothers and 2 Sisters. He spent 7 years in the U.S. Navy. Before coming to IBM Research Tom worked at E.S.L. Tom volunteers his time teaching HTML to the Explorer Post 2100 and is currently teaching HTML at the Tech Museum for the nonprofit organizations 'Vega Project' and the 'History San Jose' organization. In his spare time Tom enjoys coaching Basketball, playing tennis, bike riding and of course working on his own home page at http://home.att.net/~tuburan.