Christoph

Christoph Weber, Ph.D.
Chief Technology Officer

Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich 1990 - Ph.D.
University of Zurich 1987 - M.S. equivalent in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Immunology

 

Dr. Christoph Weber is a creative and versatile technical leader, with a knack for presenting and explaining complex scientific and technical subjects in plain English. He has held leadership positions in IT and systems and database administration for Scripps Research Institute, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Research Institute, SageTree, BIZX, SlashDot/SourceForge Media, and Achieve Internet from 1997 to 2019. Before that time, he held research positions at University of Zurich, ETH Zurich, and The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla.

Experience

Director of Technology Services, Achieve Internet - 2018 -2019

Member of the senior management team, overseeing the Achieve Internet development and support teams.
- Grew team from 15 to over 25. Hired developers and interns, and nurtured interns to become successful developers. Helped establish and grow Nashville office.
- Drove Developer Portal product development.
- Guided additional certifications for each team member, including API development, Google Cloud specializations, and Drupal development.
- Rescued and then grew two critical client projects.
- Drove Progressive Web App project, and currently act as co-maintainer of the Drupal 8 branch of the PWA module.

Director of Technology, BIZX & SourceForge Media - 2013 - 2018

Direct Development and DevOps teams, develop long range plans for hardware and software infrastructure and architecture, oversee security and regulatory compliance, and mentor team members.

-  Successfully led team integration during Sourceforge Media acquisition. 

  • Managed vendor relationships and reduced operating expenses by initiating judicious changes.
  • Responsible for data security, disaster recovery plan, and data privacy compliance (GDPR and similar).
  • Drove SEO efforts on a number of websites improving page rank to top of first page.
  • Reduced project completion time from several months to 3-4 weeks.

-  Eliminated errors and reduced code complexity in all existing and new projects. 

-  Reduced security incidents from once per week to near zero. Increased server uptime from 99.8% to 99.999% overall, and reduced downtime from hours per incident to minutes per incident.

Director of Devops, Sage Tree Solutions - 2012 - 2013

Managed high profile Drupal web server environments and deployments, incl. comic-con.org, scalable servers in the AWS cloud, as well as new web presence of Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Member of senior management team, responsible for architectural decisions covering performance, scalability and sustainability of web projects.

High Performance Computing Manager, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, La Jolla, CA — 2009 - 2012

Purchased, deployed and managed HPC clusters. Spearheaded new data center initiative based on rear door heat exchanger cooling. Improved power usage efficiency from 2.4 to industry leading 1.2

Sr. Application Analyst, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA — 1997-2008

Application support on HPC clusters and Unix workstations. Implement reliable and long lived software and hardware solutions for research scientists.  Designed and managed technical software training program with hundreds of satisfied, productive participants.

Sr. Research Associate, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA — 1995 -1998 

Consultant, MSI Inc. (now BioVia/Dassault Systems), San Diego, CA — 1995-1997

Interface redesign, usability testing, user manual revision, peak picker re-implementation, benchmarking and overall consulting for Felix 97 and other life science software.

Research Assistant, Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland — 1993-1995

Research Associate, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA — 1991-1993

Graduate Student, ETH, Zürich, Switzerland — 1987-1990

Advisor: Prof. Kurt Wüthrich, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 2002
Published Weber, C. et al, Biochemistry, 1991(30) “The NMR structure of cyclosporin A bound to cyclophilin in aqueous solution”, cited approx. 600 times

Other Activities

Board of Directors, Pennant Village Homeowner Association, San Diego — 1999-2006, 2008-2018

Board president for 13 years, vice president for 5 years. Known for effective, fair and even-handed leadership, and focus on facts and core issues.

Co-Organizer San Diego Drupal User Group and DrupalCamps San Diego 2009 - 2016

Plan and lead monthly meetings. Responsible for logistics, infrastructure and sessions at DrupalCamps. Presented a wide range of well received sessions.

Select Workshops and Seminars

Drupalcamp Atlanta 2019. “Meet the Progressive Web App module”.
SANDcamp 2018. “Meet the Schema.org Metatag module”.
SANDcamp 2013. Presented “Using Solr with Drupal at the Enterprise Level” with Doug Rowe, panel session “Comic-Con Panel: Adopting Drupal!”, and organized newcomer track.