cv - suhit

Suhit Gupta, Ph.D. suhit@suhit.com (917) 915-3411

Executive Summary :
Senior technology executive with over 20 years of experience in Technology Transformation, IT Engineering and IT Operations, and Application Development. Specializations in organizational design, creation, and turnaround, inter-departmental program management, solutions architecture, and strategy. In depth knowledge of enterprise-wide technologies and their integration in both Financial Services and Internet Technology industries. Proven ability to lead large cross-departmental teams, and manage implementation of technology transformation based strategies. Experience with leading large-scale multi-discipline programs including - Bridgewater Associates' new Trading Floor, including desktop virtualization and turret telephony Patch distribution service development which enabled patch management and software distribution, to reduce critical risk to the firm Technology transformation program, including managing consulting teams Managing the recall, ranking and relevance of search results and instant answers for the Bing Maps (previously Windows Live Local) search engine PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University. Recognized as high potential (top 0.01%) employee at Microsoft, part of the Bench College Select program and awarded the Gold Star for excellent performance. Managed large teams of managers, engineers, infrastructure associates, and SMEs to successful outcomes. Enjoys complex troubleshooting in high-pressure situations, executing bleeding-edge proof-of-concept projects in support of leading edge business use cases, architecting and implementing best-in-class technology solutions, and providing the highest levels of customer service. Logical, analytical, and creative with a passion for creation; thrives in chaotic environments. Capable of holding people accountable and setting direction.

Accomplishments :

Suhit is presently working for Bridgewater Associates and is responsible for engineering and delivering excellent infrastructure for the new Trading Floor (owned the top project for the #1 Hedge Fund in the world). This included introducing desktop virtualization and turret telephony infrastructure to the firm, with a complete business continuity plan and a disaster recovery site. This was built on a new 10G optical network, a new EMC VMax storage platform, and Cisco's UCS server technology, with strong principles in excellence in security, availability and resiliency. Suhit also worked on building the Engineering sub-department within IT, and was responsible for all departmental hiring, and managing the Workplace group (which oversaw all desktop, telephony, mobility and messaging engineering). He worked on improving technology maturity of the IT organization by building a new 200KW engineering lab, mitigating critical risk to the firm by standing up a patch management service, and influencing the new data center build out and fill out. He oversaw over 50 engineers, program managers and operations associates. Prior to Engineering, Suhit worked in Core Tech at Bridgewater as the CTO's primary leverage and helped with the construction of the technology transformation program at Bridgewater, the goal of which was to take transform the environment from boutique to enterprise class. He was also responsible for the department budget, probing and synthesizing the technology and personnel risk across the enterprise and assisting the CTO in department management. Additionally, Suhit introduced Apple's iOS into the enterprise as a mobile computing platform to improve productivity. Prior to Bridgewater, Suhit worked at Microsoft where he was responsible for the recall and relevance of search results in Microsoft's Bing Maps product. He oversaw a team of 10 developers and testers, and led the product to become industry leading in local search instant answers. Suhit was awarded the Gold Star award for excellence in performance, and recognized as a High Potential employee as part of the College Select Bench Program (0.1% acceptance rate). Suhit graduated with his Ph.D. from the Computer Science Department at Columbia University. He was affiliated with the Programming Systems Laboratory at Columbia, where he conducted research under the supervision of Dr. Gail E. Kaiser. His thesis area was in contextualization and content extraction of webpages. His work involved the creation of a framework that would enable context based content extraction from webpages. Born in India, Suhit was educated at St. Vincent's College (Pune, India), Adelphi University (Garden City, NY), Oxford University (Oxford, UK), and Columbia University (New York, NY). His primary research during his undergraduate years revolved around Non-Euclidean Geometry and Higher Dimensional Mathematics and Differential Equations. He spent time at Oxford University working in the fields of Neural Networks, Astrophysics and Astronomy. In recognition for his hard work at Adelphi, he won the Presidential Scholarship, Adelphi University's highest scholarship award. He earned his Master's degree from Columbia University in Computer Science, focusing on collaborative virtual environments.

Experience :

MAVERICK CAPITAL, LTD., New York, NY	2012 - present
Chief Technology Officer (CTO)	April 2012 - present

Responsible for all technology infrastructure and technical support across the firm, and shaping Maverick’s technology vision by formulating, evaluating, and implementing IT solutions, policies, and initiatives that improve the quality and effectiveness of the strategic goals and the efficiency of the firm’s business operations. Responsible for leading a team of IT professionals, with specific accountability for: datacenter management, market data, database management, network services, risk & strategic services, telecommunications, network & storage architecture, desktop management and mobility, service desk, security and vendor management.

Responsible for IT, Telecommunications, Market Data, Database Management, Service Desk, and Risk & Strategic Services teams
Liaison to the Investment Systems, Client Systems and Research Systems application development teams and the Quality Assurance team to ensure full understanding of data flow, data integrity, and system security
Responsible for managing relationships with technology vendors and suppliers, service providers, and data center partners
Responsible for assessing information technology control elements to mitigate IT risks regarding the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of business information
Responsible for managing IT Operations team for 7x24 operations and technical support and providing enterprise management of desktop systems, servers and data storage comprised primarily of Windows/Intel platform
Ensuring stability and performance of the global network supporting all data, voice and video services including remote access and VoIP implementation

BRIDGEWATER ASSOCIATES, LP., Westport, CT	2008 - 2012
Technology Manager	November 2009 - March 2012

Technology Manager in the IT Engineering department with responsibility to create, staff and run the department to excellence. This included ensuring that Engineering was built to transform the IT department maturity direction. Role included ensuring that Engineering was aligned with business technology strategy and goals, managing technology sub-groups within the department, and leading a variety of complex programs to reduce business risk and meet future growth needs

Responsible for all infrastructure of the new Trading Floor. Introduced desktop virtualization and a new turret telephony infrastructure to the firm, a Cisco based network, with complete disaster recoverability and robust security
Managed a miti-discipline budget across all technology programs and led a large team of engineers and operations associates
In order to reduce critical risk to the business, established a patch management as a service in the firm that included software patching of the desktop and server fleet. The program was developed to introduce a methodology to handle both software patching and software distribution
Responsible for specifying and creating the Engineering Lab to create an incubation and testing environment for all new technology initiatives. This included setting up an interim lab to handle the most critical programs and the migration into the permanent lab environment
Responsible for managing the Workplace Engineering group, which included planning, establishing and managing the desktop engineering team from scratch which would be capable of managing the requirements of the enterprise
Ensured Engineering and Operations, (plan-build-run components within IT) were aligned in their initiatives and the department was working on the right things and is meeting Bridgewater’s business needs
Ensured Engineering’s standards were sensible, (provide positive leverage vs. creating bottlenecks). Provided guidance and feedback so that plans and designs were reliable, secure and efficient, and that there was agility and reduction in risk
Created goals and responsibilities for the department and the responsibilities for all the managers. Established, enforced, and oversaw excellent management in Engineering. Responsible for all hiring for the department as part of ensuring appropriate Engineering capability/capacity to meet goals

Management Support to the CTO

March 2008 - November 2009

Responsible for providing leverage to the CTO of the world’s largest hedge fund. Worked on transforming technology at Bridgewater Associates from boutique to enterprise class. Role included the evaluation and prioritization of the CTO office, and simultaneously leading a number of project initiatives, so that Bridgewater's technology could be transformed in an acceptable timeframe

Managed strategic consulting engagements to pull together the technology transformation program for Bridgewater Associates and to launch the execution against a multi-year plan
Helped manage the technology budget portfolio for the CTO and the Core Technology department which oversaw a variety of discretionary and day to day operations & support programs
Probed and synthesized the technology and personnel risk across the enterprise, and ensured that the CTO was aware of all risks and issues from the various federated technology departments
Ensured that the CTO had a prioritized list of responsibilities across all of Technology and worked to ensure that the CTO was working on the right things
Introduced Apple's iOS into the enterprise as a mobile computing platform (all employees received iPod Touch devices leading up to iPads, to improve productivity). This has now been expanded into a firm-wide mobile initiative with a proprietary home grown application distribution framework and applications to be utilized by managers and technologists alike
Provided the CTO with an actionable synthesis of the performance, issues, risks and management of the Core Technology group, senior management and general technology talent

MICROSOFT CORP., Redmond, WA	2005 - 2008
Program Manager, Bing Maps ( previously Windows Live Local)	October 2005 - March 2008

Responsible for the recall, ranking and relevance for search results in the mapping product by Microsoft. Built and managed the roadmap for the product and was instrumental in the prioritization of a product direction new to Microsoft

Responsible for Relevance of search results, Query Parsing and Recall of search results. Managed and led a team of 10 developers and testers
Responsible for producing industry leading Local Search Instant Answers, ahead of similar products by Google or Yahoo, as rated by Comscore
Provided direction and planning leadership for the Relevance team
Ensured clear requirements and specifications of features that were prioritized for shipping, and served as Release Manager for the releases for the greater Local Search team
Liaised with Microsoft Research to introduce research ideas into the product
Recognized as a high potential employee and awarded the Microsoft Gold Star award for excellent performance

GOOGLE, INC., New York, NY	2005
Software Engineer Intern	Feb 2005 - June 2005

Invited to work at Google based on assessment of research by the Head of Google, NY. Responsible for developing and testing web classification strategies on very large internet-scale data sets

Created classification techniques for the web, based on genre analysis using algorithms that perform at web-level complexities
Introduced tree inference mapping algorithms to find similarity in web pages

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, New York, NY	2000 - 2005
Systems Administrator, Center for Computational Learning Systems	June 2004 - September 2005

Designed and set up the infrastructure at a new $25M research lab at Columbia University. Managed a budget and negotiated software and hardware (server, storage and desktop) procurement contracts

Managed a geographically disparate Windows Server 2003 and Linux based network
Created and managed Exchange Server based e-mail system for over 50 users (with the ability to grow to 250 users)
Introduced and managed EMC storage of over 100TB with automatic backup and snapshotting capability
Provided Tier 1 - Tier 3 support, and hired and trained operations associates to manage the infrastructure

Lab Manager and Systems Administrator, Programming Systems Lab

September 2000 - September 2005

Responsible for the creation, setup and maintenance of the infrastructure to support the research of the systems group (PSL) that worked on critical DARPA, ONR, NRL, and NSF programs. Influenced the technology strategy for the Computer Science department at Columbia University

Managed a Windows 2000 and Linux based server infrastructure with redundant and secure storage
Set up Windows 2000 and Linux Workstations for the use of students in the lab with sharing and backup capabilities
Provided Tier 1 software and hardware support to approximately 20 users
Upgraded and maintained servers, workstations, and software on all systems
Managed development teams that created application suites to support research goals
Introduced and maintained a high quality GPU and multimedia architecture to support all 3D graphics based research

ADELPHI UNIVERSITY, Garden City, NY	1997 - 2000
Project Manager, Real Media	January 2000 - May 2000

Discretionary project (pitched idea to the university) and allowed Adelphi to become one of the first universities to stream their graduation an other top events live on the internet. Inspired by the desire for own parents to watch the graduation ceremony live since they could not attend from overseas

Set up and managed Linux servers and Real media server for RealMedia broadcast purposes
Broadcasted the first live graduation via the internet, and developed the process for streaming all other events on-campus
Designed and engineered the infrastructure required (multimedia, storage, backup, servers) to power the event and all future events
Purchased and managed the audio/visual setup required for live broadcasting on-campus

Systems Administrator, Faculty Development Lab

June 1999 - August 2000

Responsible for the technology visualization, design and build out of the brand new 50-station faculty development lab. This included engineering and end user support, and building out the support team to ensure continued operation

Set up and managed the network, Novell 5 and NT 4 Servers for Faculty use
Set up NT 4 Workstations for the purpose of training Faculty using state-of-the-art teaching techniques
Implemented and managed IIS webservers, SQL servers, WebBoard and news servers
Provided Tier 1 software and hardware support to Faculty
Upgraded and maintained servers, workstations and software on all systems
Supervised and supported technicians in the Lab

Systems Administrator and Webmaster, Adelphi University Library

May 1997 - May 1999

Responsible, as part of a two-person team, to provide IT support and development for all library infrastructure and end user employee support

Operated the help desk and resolved problems typically in Windows NT 4.0
Managed a Novell 4.11 and Windows NT 4.0 network, over 50 employee and student workstations and ~25 end user terminals
Provided Tier 1 software and hardware (network, storage and database) support
Maintained and updated the university library website

Honors & Awards :

Microsoft Gold Star Award for exceptional performance, January 2008
College Select Program, Microsoft Corp., Class of 2005-2006

Microsoft Leadership Program for high potential employees (~45 employees per year)

Program committee member on the Browsers and User Interfaces track of WWW2006 Conference (http://www2006.org)
Best Student Poster, WWW 2005 Conference (http://www2005.org)
Best TA Award, Columbia University, 2004
Poster Reviewer for the WWW2004 Conference (http://www2004.org)
Best Paper Finalist at the WWW2003 Conference - Budapest Hungary
Best Student Paper Finalist at the WWW2003 Conference - Budapest Hungary
GRA - Graduate Research Assistantship, Columbia University, 2000-2005
Presidential Scholarship (full tuition waiver) for academic merit at Adelphi, 1996-2000
Mary E. Buchman Award for Excellence in Computer Science, May 2000
John Eddy Scholarship for academic merit at Adelphi, 1997-2000
Honors College Student at Adelphi
Dean's List 1996-97, 1997-98 and 1998-99

Publications :

Suhit Gupta, "Context-Based Content Extraction of HTML Documents", PhD Thesis, June 2005
Suhit Gupta, Gail Kaiser, “Extracting content from accessible webpages”, Proceedings of the 2005 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A), May 2005
Suhit Gupta, Gail Kaiser, "P2P Video Synchronization in a Collaborative Virtual Environment", International Conference on Web Learning, ICWL, 2005
Suhit Gupta, Gail E Kaiser, Salvatore Stolfo, Hila Becker, Genre Classification of Websites Using Search Engine Snippets for Content Extraction", Submitted to SIGIR 2005
Suhit Gupta, Gail E Kaiser, Salvatore Stolfo, "Extracting Context To Improve Accuracy For HTML Content Extraction", Poster at the World Wide Web Conference 2005
Suhit Gupta; Gail E Kaiser, Salvatore Stolfo, "Extracting Context To Improve Accuracy For HTML Content Extraction", Submitted to the World Wide Web Conference 2005.
Suhit Gupta, Gail Kaiser, "A Virtual Environment for Collaborative Distance Learning With Video Synchronization", Computers and Advanced Technology in Education (CATE), August 2004.
Suhit Gupta; Gail E Kaiser, Peter Grimm, Michael F Chiang, Justin Starren, "Automating Content Extraction of HTML Documents" Submitted to the World Wide Web Journal, In Press.
Michael F. Chiang, Roy G. Cole, Suhit Gupta, Gail E Kaiser, Justin Starren, "World Wide Web Accessibility by Visually Disabled Patients: Problems and Solutions", Survey of Ophthalmology, January 2005.
Dan Phung, Giuseppe Valetto, Gail Kaiser, Suhit Gupta, "Optimizing Quality for Collaborative Video Viewing", Technical Report 00904, Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, Apr 2004.
Suhit Gupta, Gail Kaiser, David Neistadt, Peter Grimm, "DOM-based Content Extraction of HTML Documents", 12th International World Wide Web Conference, 12th International World Wide Web Conference, May 2003.
Suhit Gupta, Gail Kaiser, "CRUNCH - Web-based Collaboration for Persons with Disabilities", W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, Teleconference on Making Collaboration Technologies Accessible for Persons with, Apr 2003.
Philip Gross, Suhit Gupta, Gail Kaiser, Gaurav Kc, Janak Parekh, "An Active Events Model for System Monitoring", Working Conference on Complex and Dynamic Systems Architectures, Sep 2001.
Suhit Gupta, "AI2TV – Video Synchronization in a Collaborative Virtual Environment", Masters Thesis

Talks and Teaching

“Content Extraction of HTML Documents”, Invited talk at Google, New York, October 2004
W1113 - Introduction to Computer Science for Non-Majors (C) - Spring 2004
W1007 Introduction to Computer Science (JAVA) - Summer 2004
W3157 Advanced Programming - Summer 2004
Teaching Assistant

W3156 Software Engineering (3 times)
W3157 Advanced Programming (2 times)
W4156 Advanced Software Engineering (2 times)
W4824 Computer Architecture (2 times)