From Marco Di Vitorio, Manager, ACT Application Administration

I’m pleased to announce that Armin Krauss will be joining the ACT Operations team on August 31st. Armin will be managing the environment for the University homepage collection as well as supporting the design, development and ongoing operation of our next generation web services offerings.

Armin’s academic background includes a Master of Information Studies and Bachelor Degree in Computer Science and Business Administration. In his most recent role, he served as the senior developer and system administrator for a variety of research projects within the department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE. This included a project to explore how collaborative technologies can be used in an inquiry based learning scenario.

Armin has experience in a range of areas including web and mobile development, back end services, user interaction design, server administration and data extraction methods.

Please join me in welcoming Armin to the team.

From Saira Mall, Manager, ACT Support

I am delighted to announce that Melvin Chien has joined the ACT Support team as Faculty Liaison, Technology. As a frontline member of the ACT Support team, Melvin will provide direct support, training and documentation development for Portal Help, and on the use of academic and collaborative technologies.

Melvin comes to us from the School of Continuing Studies (SCS) where he was an IT Project Support Specialist. At SCS he was involved with testing, troubleshooting, researching and implementing new technologies such as Blackboard Collaborate, B Virtual, and SharePoint. He also delivered workshops to IT colleagues and instructors.  Melvin’s project management experience at SCS includes various projects to streamline and automate the School’s manual processes, such as Exam Centre registration for online students and Grading Notification to improve the student experience.  Melvin also worked on a project that is aiming to integrate DestinyOne (SCS’ student registration system similar to ROSI) with Blackboard Learn and with UTORid systems  for instructors and students.

Melvin studied Informatics at the University of California- Irvine, specializing in human-computer interaction and interface design. His research focused on usability testing and solutions to improve software applications for everyday users.  He also developed Android applications.

Melvin enjoys watching anime, playing board games and video games, and traveling the world.

Please join me in welcoming Melvin to our team.