Mark Fontana

Current

Staff Software Engineer at Electronics For Imaging, Inc.
Founder at Pianocorder.info

Past

Technical Director at Pixar Animation Studios
Graduate Reseach Associate at Ohio Supercomputer Center

Education

The Ohio State University
The Ohio State University

Recommended

5 people have recommended Mark

Connections

68 connections

Industry

Computer Software

Websites

Mark Fontana’s Summary

• M.S. in Computer and Information Science

• 11 years of industry experience in digital imaging from Pixar-level computer animation to high-volume color printing

• 9 years experience in embedded systems, Windows and Linux kernel device drivers, other performance-critical systems-level programming

• Strong knowledge of OS concepts: process, thread, heap, stack, DMA, interrupts, timers, virtual memory, IPC, user vs. kernel space, race conditions and locking

• Designed and implemented software for several autonomous, maintenance-free network appliances with multi-year uptimes

• Identified and implemented technological innovations to improve efficiency of others

• Enjoy contributing to both the high level design and low level implementation of a project

• Enjoy applying critical thinking to produce robust products and high-quality code

• Skilled at technical writing, crafting marketing prose, and alleviating customer concerns

• Comfortable performing basic hardware tasks (soldering, assembly and rework; use of standard lab equipment such as scopes, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers and multimeters)

• Passion for technical challenges extends outside of work; have reverse-engineered and improved DVD players, projectors, and other electronic devices

• Entrepreneurial spirit has led to a successful side business supporting electronic player piano systems plus some consulting in this area

Mark Fontana’s Specialties:

Embedded systems, reverse-engineering, OS/kernel-level code, Windows and Linux device drivers, chip and board bring-up, data format conversion, plug-ins, software glue, cryptography, real-time hardware-software control applications, 2D and 3D graphics, multi-platform SDK development, Windows installers, Windows Driver Framework (WDF, KMDF), Windows Driver Model (WDM), DHCP, HTTP, HTML, XML, SSL/TLS, TCP/IP, IrDA, SNMP, MIDI, UTF-8, I2C, USB, PCI, LCD controllers

Mark Fontana’s Experience

Staff Software Engineer

Electronics For Imaging, Inc.

(Public Company; EFII; Computer Software industry)

February 2000 — Present (9 years 10 months)

Developed robust, performance-critical Windows and Linux kernel drivers and control software enabling high-end digital color presses from Canon, Xerox, Ricoh and Kodak NexPress to be driven by EFI's flagship Fiery print servers.

Designed and implemented the embedded Linux-based firmware for EFI's PrintMe Station network appliance, a small ATM-like device providing secure printing services to guests at hotels, airports, and other hospitality areas (http://www.printme.com). Developed a comprehensive partner SDK for the PrintMe service supporting Linux, Windows, LynxOS, MacOS X and VxWorks.
Founder

Pianocorder.info

(Consumer Electronics industry)

August 1995 — Present (14 years 4 months)

Run a successful side business selling self-designed custom hardware/software solutions for modernizing the Superscope/Marantz Pianocorder player piano system.

Reverse-engineered the proprietary CD formats for several modern player piano systems and maintain freeware encoding software supporting all of them. (http://dp70.dyndns.org/mid2pianocd/)

Provide ongoing technical services to Live Performance, Inc., a manufacturer of high-resolution reproducing player piano systems.
Technical Director

Pixar Animation Studios

(Public Company; Motion Pictures and Film industry)

January 1998 — January 2000 (2 years 1 month)

Developed and executed in-house procedures for creating digital video masters of Pixar's animated films for broadcast and home video, pioneering the high-quality transfers that are commonplace today on Blu-Ray and DVD.

Created Renderman shaders and 3D paint setups for Toy Story 2 and also performed the video transfers of that film.

Managed Pixar's renderfarm and image disk arrays, rendered a substantial portion of Pixar's second feature film A Bug's Life; wrote a variety of Perl/Tcl/shell scripts to automate rendering processes and to manage and monitor resources.
Graduate Reseach Associate

Ohio Supercomputer Center

(Educational Institution; 51-200 employees; Research industry)

November 1995 — December 1997 (2 years 2 months)

Developed software to drive haptic force feedback devices in virtual surgery and patient rehabilitation applications.

Implemented embedded software for a haptic joystick control system allowing a wheelchair user to navigate a virtual space assisted by active guidance and force feedback upon collisions.

Implemented real-time haptic control software under Linux to drive Immersion Corporation's prototype sinus surgery simulator in tandem with an SGI Onyx-based interactive volume renderer. Imagery and force feedback were derived from MRI data.

Mark Fontana’s Education

The Ohio State University

M.S. , Computer Science , 1995 — 1997

Specialized in hardware-software systems, computer graphics and animation.

Master's thesis: Designed a conversion system to archive digital player piano recordings from the Marantz Pianocorder system of the 1970s, including accurate conversion to the modern MIDI file format.

Produced a two-minute computer-animated short film, "Butterflies in the Rain", featuring procedural animation synchronized with music from a MIDI file, shown at SIGGRAPH 1997.
The Ohio State University

B.S. , Computer Science , 1991 — 1994

Specialized in software systems, with an emphasis on computer graphics. Graduated "Magna cum laude" and "With Distinction". Minored in Russian.

Undergraduate honors thesis: Designed and built a hardware/software system to optically scan and archive player piano rolls as Standard MIDI files.