Chairman

Caskey Dickson - Caskey L. Dickson is currently a Lecturer and Manager of the Computer Science Labs at Loyola Marymount University's Frank R. Seaver College of Science and Engineering. In his 12 year career in the software industry he has co-founded two prominent online services, CitySearch and LiquidWit; served as primary architect for the technology behind two more online services, The Wedding Channel and CarsDirect; and founded his own consulting company, TechnoCage, through which he has contributed to numerous other online and offline software projects.

In his spare time he contributes to and manages a number of open source software projects, founded the Santa Clarita Valley Linux User's Group (SCVLUG) and is nurturing the newly reborn student ACM chapter at LMU. His current areas of research involve reliable multi-petabyte data storage systems and distributed agent-based simulation. Caskey has been a member of ACM since the mid-90's and can be reached at caskey@acm.org.

Vice Chairman

John David N. Dionisio - Dr. Dionisio is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at LMU, teaching courses in Computer Graphics, Programming Languages, Database Systems, Interaction Design, Operating Systems, Bioinformatics, and Multimedia Authoring. Prior to coming to LMU, he was part of the UCLA Medical Informatics Group and co-founded Medaxis Corporation, a health care information system startup based in Santa Monica. He continues to collaborate and consult with both entities in his spare time. In 2003 he received a "Magna cum Laude" award for an exhibit at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), and he currently serves as an Assistant Editor for the American Journal of Roentgenology.

"I plan to assist Caskey Dickson on transforming and modernizing LA ACM to better meet the needs of current and potential members, and to continue this work in the succeeding year as Chair."

Secretary

Mike Walsh - Mike was the secretary of the Los Angeles Chapter of ACM during 2005-2006. He has been active in the LA Chapter since 1971 and has held a number of chapter positions during this period. He retired from TRW in November 1992 after a career of software development from requirements, design, coding, test, and delivery of software to customers on a number of projects. He has a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin and a MS in Mechanical Engineering from USC. He expects to stay active in the LA Chapter.

Treasurer

Ray Toal - Dr. Toal is Professor of Computer Science at Loyola Marymount University where he has been teaching continuously since 1986. He has also been doing architecture and development at Citysearch since 1996. He has held past positions in the local chapter including Treasurer, Vice Chair and Chair. He finds the whole idea of a "general interest" professional society very cool since the greatest thinkers and intellectuals of all time were not members of sharply focused SIGs. However, Ray is not running for membership chair, but for treasurer, and the best he can promise is to avoid investing the chapter's funds in Haitian penny stocks or bonds for building multimillion dollar Curling stadiums in Eastern Alabama.

Member-at-Large

Esperanza Rodriguez - Esperanza (SP) was the Treasurer of the LA Chapter of ACM for 2005-2006. She has been an active ACM member since 1970 and has served as LA Chapter Member-at-Large several times. Her goal is to spread the good word about LA ACM to the new generation of computer scientists attending schools of higher learning located near our meeting venue. Professionally, she was Senior Manager at Computer Sciences Corporation, Senior Scientist at Hughes Aircraft Company, and mathematician at the Rand Corporation. She holds a BA degree in mathematics from Immaculate Heart College, MS in systems science from UCLA, and Engineer degree in computer science from UCLA.

Myron Pullen - Myron Pullen has worked in numerous positions in computing and software development for more than 40 years in the aerospace-defense and commercial industries in Southern California. Assignments have included consulting, software design and development, project management, computer center management, office automation management, and web site design and maintenance. He has been a member of the Los Angeles Chapter for more than 25 years and has served as the Chapter's Webmaster and Director of Information for the past four years.

Myron feels that the most significant challenge facing our chapter today is maintaining and growing our membership. He does not feel this is a problem which will be easily or quickly solved, but is one at which we must direct our attention on an ongoing basis. Myron will work to find and implement strategies for increasing the chapter's membership with particular emphasis on including younger computer professionals.