Work Experience

9/2003 - present, Google Inc.

   11/2005 - present, Engineering Manager, Lively by Google

• Created vision, got project chartered.
• Built and led a team of engineers through technical design and implementation. Launched as lively.com.

• Led a team of engineers to improve Gmail revenue while maintaining a positive user experience. Launched 15 experiments, with a cumulative revenue improvement of 140%.
• Oversaw technical direction, scheduling, feature decisions, and coordination with other groups.
• Brainstormed and implemented in C++ and Java various techniques of text processing and information retrieval.
• Co-inventor on 3 pending patents.

• Served as one of the first engineers on the project, from initial design through launching the public beta.
• Contributed leadership experience toward scheduling, feature prioritization, bug triage, staffing.
• Designed and implemented in C++ key components including query processing, instant messenger capture, status pings, and snippet generation. Sole engineer of the Sidebar during v1.
• Co-inventor on 19 pending patents.
• Won a Google Founder's Award for my work.

• Worked on the launch of theatre showtimes & reviews on google.com.
• Developed in C++ algorithms for query parsing and ranking of movie clusters.

• Served on the Hiring Committee which makes offer approval or rejection on interview candidates.
• Screened 10 - 20 engineering resumes per week for phone screen approval.
• Primary engineer responsible for designing the process for Windows engineering hiring.
• Recognized strong interviewer for engineering candidates and leadership/management candidates.
• Portrayed in HR marketing campaign full-page ad in the New York Times (pdf), Google recruiting video, monster.com Q&A article (link), Google China blog entry on "behind-the-scenes heroic engineers", CNN television segment.

7/1998 - 9/2003, Microsoft Corp.

   1/2001 - 9/2003, Software Design Engineer Lead, Microsoft Flight Simulator

• Managed a sub-team of developers through the shipping of Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight. Oversaw feature design, scheduling, and development.
• Designed and developed the dynamic weather system, the main selling point of Flight Simulator 2004, through the entire ship cycle. Press reviewers describe it as "breathtaking", "amazing", "a breakthrough".
• Created an innovative new technology for rendering clouds. Presented this work at the SIGGRAPH Conference in July 2003.
• Developed a service that supplies streaming real-time weather information so users can download and fly in current weather conditions.
• Drove performance analysis and optimization for Flight Simulator 2002. Reduced stutters from hundreds per minute to virtually nil, and dramatically increased framerates.
• Managed long-term careers of developers on my team.
• Acted as go-to person for other functional groups (Program Management, Test, Art) for numerous areas within the product.
• Exercised strong cross-group coordination skills with other groups at Microsoft (DirectX, MSN Gaming Zone) in coordinating work, identifying dependencies, and resolving conflicts.

• Designed, scheduled, and implemented various areas of a racing game for PC and Xbox, including VCR, event logging system, UI, standalone track editor, tools, and input system.
• Developed the artistic pipeline process. Collaborated with other functional areas to define feature set and scope.

Education

• M.S., Computer Science, University of Washington, 2001. GPA 3.9. (While working fulltime at Microsoft.)
• B.S., Computer Science, California Institute of Technology, 1998. GPA 3.8. (Graduated at age 18.)
  

Skills

• Proficient in C++, Java.
• Experience with both Windows and Unix environments.
• Experience in graphics, games, win32, and informational retrieval.

Publications

• Wang, N., Wade, B. Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow (and Rain). Game Programming Gems 5, Charles River Media. 2005.
• Wang, N. Realistic and Fast Cloud Rendering, Journal of Graphics Tools. Publication in 2004.
• Wang, N. Let There Be Clouds, Game Developers Magazine. January 2004.
• Ishii, H., Page, S., Wang, N. 1999. A Day at the Beach: Human Agents Self-Organizing on the Sand Pile. Advances in Complex Systems. Vol 2, Issue 1. p 37 - 64.

Conferences

• Paper reviewer for Eurographics, 2006.
• Paper reviewer for Computer Graphics International, 2006.
• Wang, N. Rendering Falling Rain and Snow. ACM SIGGRAPH 2004.
• Wang, N. Realistic and Fast Cloud Rendering in Computer Games. ACM SIGGRAPH 2003.
• Niniane Wang, 2004. Game Developers Conference (GDC). San Jose, March 2004.

Patents

• 3 pending patents for work on Gmail ads.
• 19 pending patents for work on Google Desktop Search.
• Niniane Wang. Dynamic Weather Simulation. Filed November 2003.
• Niniane Wang, Michael Gilbert. Weather Themes. Filed January 2004.

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