Newsletters - MATLAB News & Notes
Meet The Developers
Richard Lang and Stacey Gage played key roles in the development of the newly released Model-Based Calibration Toolbox and the Aerospace Blockset.
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Richard Lang is lead developer for the Model-Based Calibration Toolbox in our Cambridge, UK office. He is responsible for managing development, creating the infrastructure for the main GUIs, and coding all design-of- experiments features. Richard holds an MSci in theoretical and experimental physics from Cambridge University in England. |
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Stacey Gage, a developer in the Simulink Applications Group, is the Natick Product Lead for the Aerospace Blockset, a liaison with external developers of the Virtual Reality Toolbox, and a developer on a system built to help MatrixX users migrate |
N&N: When did you first learn about MATLAB?
Richard: When I joined The MathWorks. I'd never heard of MATLAB before then. I wish I'd had MATLAB in college-I would have saved myself a lot of Fortran coding!
Stacey: In the fall of '89. I was at the University of Cincinnati, and I used the DOS version of MATLAB. I also saw the beta version of Simulink (then called Simulab) when I was a fellow at Arizona State University. I did my master's thesis in Simulink.
N&N: What did you do yesterday?
Richard: I was in a meeting to discuss product customizations for some Japanese users. I spent most of the rest of the day learning the Java Swing repainting mechanism-my Java has become a bit rusty in the two years since I took the course!
Stacey: I was writing M-scripts for the Aerospace Blockset and reviewing case studies for the blockset's documentation.
N&N: What has been your biggest technical challenge?
Richard: Experimental design. This involved a lot of statistics, which was new to me, so I had to learn fast. I read a lot of books and papers. I also talked to people at Warwick University who had expertise in this area.
Stacey: Trying to coordinate all the internal and external components of the Aerospace Blockset project, including development, marketing, documentation, and QE. You really don't resolve a challenge like this. You just have to live with it.
N&N: What is the best project that you have worked on at The MathWorks?
Richard: I'd have to say the Model-Based Calibration Toolbox. This project taught me the most. I learned to program in MATLAB and design applications.
Stacey: It is the Aerospace Blockset. Both my degrees are in aerospace, and I use knowledge pooled from both of them. I still look at my old textbooks and even remember specific lectures that help me. It's nice to know that all that knowledge is still useful.
N&N: What motivates you the most?
Richard: Interface design. Customers respond to an interface, whereas they may not appreciate the complexity of the algorithms underneath it. Interface design makes the project seem more real to me, too, because it shows the concrete results of your work.
Stacey: I enjoy working on the small parts that make up the big picture and giving our customers blocks that they can use day-to-day. I remember how time-consuming it could be when I was working at other companies before the Aerospace Blockset was available. That helps me understand what our customers need from this product and motivates me to help them.
N&N: What would your ultimate project be?
Richard: In many ways the Model-Based Calibration Toolbox is the ultimate project for me because it pushes the limits of what's being done in MATLAB in terms of coding and creating new object types and graphics. It was a major technical challenge to put all that together seamlessly.
Stacey: The Aerospace Blockset is the ultimate project for me. It is my dream project. It's so exciting to work in the field of aerospace for a living. It's what I've always wanted to do.
N&N: Is there one thing that you learned in school or at The MathWorks that you apply every day?
Richard: Taking the time to find out what customers really want. A customer may ask for three or four buttons on the interface. But once you understand what they are trying to accomplish, you can often build in that functionality without cluttering up the interface with additional elements.
Stacey: I'd have to say the benefit of teamwork. Things work much more smoothly when people with different strengths work together for a common goal.
N&N: What do you do in your free time?
Richard: I do quite a lot of cooking-in general I like doing pretty much anything where I end up looking at something I've made from scratch. I also enjoy watching films, and in the very brief spells when the sun shines here, I like to sit back in it and do absolutely nothing!
Stacey: My husband and I recently bought a new house, and we're enjoying puttering around in it. Occasionally, we like to have friends over for dinner. We also have fun with our two cats.
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