Research BIO

1. Leila Anne Breene, Ph.D. BIO February 2018
Cell: +1 (610) 241-5174 Email: annebreene@arcologix.com Website: www.arcologix.com
Research – In my Ph.D. dissertation under the direction of Jerome Rothstein at Ohio State (1979-1982),
we created and published a parallel algorithm that recognized conic sections in one clock cycle. The
machine was a bus automaton, a model introduced by Rothstein, whose architecture was comprised of
a cube of 1000x1000x1000 cells/processors each connected to their nearest neighbors (1982). At
A&M, Jack Bryant and I came upon a paper by another of Rothstein’s Ph.D. students, that immediately
suggested an algorithm for image warping using straight lines (1993). An Octree addressing algorithm
using Karnaugh maps to specify addresses of Octree nodes, such that the shortest path between any
two nodes is uniquely identified by only the two addresses (1993) was published in the UK. It is
currently used in computer vision and medical algorithms. This result came from a serendipitous event
involving a project looking into a parallel LU Decomposition algorithm. In addition, I guided students
in research projects that involved simulations of bus automata, and a language to use in programming
them. The conics were essentially discrete, and I would like to eventually broaden that in relation to
number theory. In the last several years, I have been researching the Internet of Things (IoT) and
Artificial Intelligence.
Teaching – In graduate school (Ohio State) I taught a series of upper level undergraduate business
computing courses. In my first position at the University of Vermont, I taught a class of 500
undergraduates an introduction to microprocessors. I also wrote a test bank for the publisher of that
text. In the next few years, I taught undergraduate courses at SUNY Plattsburgh that included
programming, graphics, relational data bases and computer architecture among others. My Ph.D.
advisor visited and taught a series of seminars on Bus Automata. At TAMU, I taught data structures,
C as an object-oriented language, and software engineering. In the summer I was privileged to teach
the graduate parallel processing course. Much later, I taught professional Business Analysts to ready
them to pass the CBAP (Certified Business Analysis Professional) certification test of the IIBA
(International Institute of Business Analysis) for Business Analysis. I again taught it at Shell Trading. I
am planning to offer a similar course on-line.
Business – My first job after college was with Chemical Abstracts Service. We programmed in
machine language and used punched cards. A simple run took 4 hours and was performed in a closed
air-conditioned room that housed the computers and had a raised floor. I moved around a bit and
finally took a job at Ohio State with a professor there. I soon enrolled and got my Ph.D. After leaving
the University of Vermont, I did some consulting. Later, I found a job at Compaq. There I took over
the sound testing for the assembly line. I transformed the code from C to C++ and gave a talk about
the process of converting code to object-oriented code at a conference. I then signed on with Shell
Trading. I wrote the first interface to the new risk management system. I was promoted to Business
Analyst, and then was given the lead for the system that tracked all oil contracts and scheduled oil
deliveries. When I left Shell, Lawrence Silverman and I founded ArcoLogix in 2014 as the IT partner of
GridPlex and LyteSense. We wrote a patent, we refurbished a system that was in place in San
Francisco and brought the technology up to date. We programmed the lights for a park in Camden. I
learned Blender, a 3D open-source modelling system, and began modeling Camden City Hall. I am
heading a working group that is writing a white paper for CABA (Continental Automated Building
Association) on ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Connected Home.’ ArcoLogix has some ideas for
expanding Blender in interesting ways to support lighting experts.
Colleges: Wellesley, MIT, Dartmouth, University of Dayton 1971. Ohio State, Ph.D. Theoretical Computer Science 1982.
Skills: Smalltalk, Java, C, C++, Python, SQL, Blender, Excel Pivot tables, Machine Learning, Software Engineering,
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lannebreenearcologix