Dr. Ehud (Udi) Schlessinger

PhD, Computer Science, University College London, London, UK, 2007

MSc, Computer Science, New York University, New York, NY, USA, 2000

BA, Economics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel, 1997


Quick Bio:
Until about 5 years ago, I didn't think I'll ever be studying for another degree. Once I graduated from college my plan was to work in the high tech industry. See, my goal was to taste the 'high tech experience'. Work crazy hours. Try a few positions. Meet and learn from programming geeks. Maybe get some worthless stock options (never thought they'd actually be worth anything). This I got to do, and more: I worked some insane hours (ah, the days of leaving at 1am on a weekend), got laid-off 3 times in 5 months (remember the internet bubble?), hacked some code while eating pizza while discussing the obvious advantages of Java/C++/Perl (pick one) over Java/C++/Perl (pick another). but overall, I really loved it. During those years, I became better at what I did (mainly Java programming). My most senior position was the lead programmer of a company named Info-X, which was acquired since by 3M. I joined the company when there were fewer than 20 people, and left 2 years later, when it more than tripled its size. Despite the fact that my job quite quickly became repetitive and fairly boring, these were very exciting times.

And then I found out about Evolutionary Computation. I didn't know about this field at all! This seemed too science fiction to be real. Why.. if we could evolve solutions to problems.. is there anything we can't do?? I immediately realized this is a technology I have to master and so, decided to pursue it.. and not long afterwards, found myself doing a PhD!