Shawn A. Rowley, a senior software engineer at the
Fund for Peace, is responsible for the ongoing and future
development of the CAST software application. Since joining
the Fund for Peace in July 2005, he has streamlined the software.
By reducing its size by more than one third, increasing
its efficiency tenfold, and automating all core processes,
Shawn has allowed the enormous amounts of data required
for the calculation of methodological observations such as
the Failed State Index to be processed completely in
a matter of days. He has redesigned CAST from a stand-alone,
one-system application to an object-oriented, multi-tier
application with a centralized database. His experience with
object-oriented design and architecture will take CAST to the
next level of software development, providing a solid foundation
on which to build and the flexibility to adapt to the constantly
evolving concepts of social science. Currently, Shawn is working
on designing a customized lexical component for improved analysis
and the implementation of a neural network that will allow
for weighting based on source, intensity, and other variables
identified in the data utilized by CAST.
Shawn received the ACS Technical Excellence Award for a
Data Conversion Program and has a Delphi 5.0 Brain Bench
Certification. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Computer
Science at Towson University in Maryland in 1995. He comes
to the FfP with over ten years of experience in software
architecture, design, and development applying a vast
array of different technologies and development techniques
in hopes of developing software that can actually make a
difference in world decision-making.
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