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Coder's 'a rock star' [The Roanoke Times, Va.](Roanoke Times (Roanoke, VA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) May 27--BLACKSBURG -- As competitive coding gains traction in the Blacksburg technology community, Hussein Ahmed has emerged as the man to beat. Ahmed has won both of Blacksburg's two recent hackathons. He originally went for social and professional connections. He then ended up collecting $7,500 in prize money, has laid the foundation of a new company and is receiving invitations to talk at conferences. Ahmed, 32, of Blacksburg is a software engineer at VTLS Inc. in Blacksburg, a library automation software company. Born and educated in Egypt, he said he entered the first local hackathon to meet more people in the local tech community and hear such speakers as Aneesh Chopra, former White House chief technology officer. The Hokie Health Code-a-thon was held April 13 and 14 at TechPad, organized by Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council and the Virginia Tech Entrepreneurs Club and sponsored by Health 2.0, a company that hopes to expand use of information technology in medical care. Ahmed, the only competitor to work alone, won the event, which he described as a challenge to make innovative use of government data related to health care. He hatched the concept for a company he is going to call HeyRecall, which sends custom alerts to subscribers about drug recalls. The prize was $2,500. He met his goal to connect. He met, among others, Nathan Latka, CEO of Lujure Media Inc. When Blacksburg-based Lujure sponsored its own hackathon May 11 and 12, Ahmed entered. Working alone again, rather than within a team, he won the Lujure hackathon by coding the best improvement to the company's Facebook page-design software. The prize was $5,000. Ahmed's edge includes his ample education. He said he holds three advanced degrees -- a master's in computer engineering from Arab Academy for Science and Technology in his hometown of Alexandria, Egypt; and a master's and a doctorate in computer science from Virginia Tech. He said he is working on his master's in business administration through online courses offered by Indiana University. A website detailing his professional and personal tastes states, "I really like the challenge of laying down an architecture of complex, highly scalable systems. I believe that a neat architecture makes all the difference." Since his success, he has accepted an invitation to two major events. He's been asked to join the innovation expo planned at the state convention of the Virginia Democratic Party in Richmond next month, meeting people and telling his story. A few days after that, he's accepted an offer to exhibit his success at the Health Data Initiative Forum III, nicknamed The Health Datapalooza in Washington, D.C. "In recognition of your outstanding performance in the code-a-thons, we would like for you to be a part of this fantastic event," his invitation read. ___ (c)2012 The Roanoke Times (Roanoke, Va.) Visit The Roanoke Times (Roanoke, Va.) at www.roanoke.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |