Sean Kauffman

Computer Science major
Class of 2005

(1/6/2014) Sean Kauffman is a principal software engineer at Oracle in Seattle, having survived two acquisitions to arrive there. He also sits on the board of directors for VectorBlox, a hardware startup in Vancouver, BC. In his free time he plays dodgeball, fiddles in an Irish folk band, and works on his car.

(7/20/2017)  A lot has been going on with me in the last couple of years! In Fall
2014 I moved to Ontario to do a master’s (of mathematics) in CS in
real-time embedded software at the University of Waterloo. I finished
that degree at the end of last year and I stuck around to do my PhD in
electrical and computer engineering. I switched departments, but I
stuck with the same supervisor who is cross appointed between them.
Coming back to school has not been easy, but I do no regret it.

I’m actually working on some pretty exciting stuff! I am
collaborating with researchers at NASA JPL on formal methods work that
is being considered for use in the Mars 2020 mission (also some
machine learning). I have spent a number of months down in Pasadena,
and I will probably be back and forth a few more times as I continue
my research. We are working on methods to improve telemetry
processing and to help the rover operators more easily understand what
is happening on Mars.

I’ve also been teaching a bit! I taught a section of CS 241
Foundations of Sequential Programs last term and I’ll teach it again
in the fall. It’s kind of an intro to compilers course with a bit of
language theory. You may be pleased to know that I used my old Sipser
“Intro to the Theory of Computation” textbook for some lecture prep.
It’s funny that I remember being quite intimidated by the book when I
took CS 360 from you, but now I find it to be really approachable and
well written.