My name is Nicholas C. DeMello. I'm an artist, chemist, author, programmer, and surf bum (not necessarily in that order--the surf bum part ranks much higher :-).I was born in Redwood City (that's in California USA, a little south of San Francisco). Depending on who you ask, Redwood City is either in Silicon Valley or close enough to not make a difference. My wife Angelica (currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Biology at UCSD) and I were married in her home town of Honolulu, Hawaii. We met at Cal Berkeley, where I received my B.S. in Chemistry (1985-1990) and she received hers in Genetics. After Berkeley, I earned my Ph.D. (researching synthetic, mechanistic, and computational organic chemistry) with Prof. Dennis P. Curran at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania (1990-1995). Simply put, there is no better place to do research than Pitt--I'll always be grateful for the incredible support I received from everyone at Pitt Chem. After Pittsburgh I returned to the golden state as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at UCLA. My research at UCLA with Prof. Kendall N. Houk involved exploring and designing catalytic processes for asymmetric chemical synthesis by computer simulation.
After my post-doctoral work, I stayed on at UCLA becoming one of the founding investigators (and the only chemist :-) for UCLA's Center for Digital Innovation. The CDI is a university sponsored research center with the mandate to explore the idea of combining Hollywood production professionals, industrial strength programmers, and university level educators to create the highest quality educational software possible. My focus was in creating graphic applications and multimedia software for research and education in chemistry and physics. While I was at the CDI, I also wrote a monthly column in MacTech Magazine called MacTech Online, (which toured various internet resources and technologies for Macintosh resident programmers). MacTech Magazine has a readership of about 50,000, is published in 64 countries, and has been the premiere development journal for Macintosh resident programmers since 1984. Seeing my columns translated into Japanese for MacTech Japan was particularly kool. In January of '98, I gave up my column to become the Editor of MacTech Magazine while continuing at the CDI. While I was at UCLA I completed contracts for McGraw-Hill, the ministry of education for Malaysia, Apple Computers, and a few other folks.
In June '98, I left UCLA to join the Xplain Corporation, where I'm involved at the corporate level in both Marketing and Special Projects. I'm continueing as the Editor of MacTech Magazine (an Xplain publication) and I'm in charge of Vendor Relations for the Developer Depot (a mail order catalog selling software developer tools, also an Xplain publication). In my "free" time, I moderate the newsgroup comp.sys.mac.programmer.info, and create ray traced molecular art to illustrate chemical interactions (which have appeared in C&E News, Science, the Cover of Angewandte Chemie, the cover of Accounts of Chemical Research, the 1997 ACS Calendar and other magazines). When no one's looking I try and find time to ski, snow-board, surf, paint, laugh, and spend entirely too much time exploring my Macintosh.
One of these days though, I want to try this "sleeping" thing I hear so much about... :-)
Internet: nick@demello.com _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ AOL: codeweaver _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ eWorld: nick _/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ MacTech: editor@mactech.com _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/
A genie once offered a man three wishes, "Wish any dream you care to wish--and I will make it come true." "I wish for the wisdom to choose my dreams to the best advantage, I wish for the compassion to understand the consequences of those dreams, and I wish for the determination to act upon my dreams," the man responded. The genie cautioned, "But in asking for wisdom, compassion, and determination you will have exhausted your wishes, I will not be able to make your dreams come true." The man smiled a crooked smile and replied, "Making dreams happen is a trivial thing. The challenge is choosing the right dreams, realizing how they affect others, and holding on to them."