Thaddeus Macy

Bio

Tad Macy is a consummate hands-on technical director with more than 25 years of experience in the creative application of complex information technologies for dynamic and progressive institutions and projects. He currently works at Bowdoin College as the lead Senior Software Development Designer.

Working closely with students, staff and faculty, Tad creates and builds entire systems for unique, specialized and highly demanding development projects. He has built data-intensive web sites supporting instruction, technology and research into many different application and subject matters. In addition to leading special programs, he is technically expert in large and diverse set of open source tools (PHP, Perl, JavaScript, MySQL, Linux, Apache, and Drupal) and commercial application tools (ArcGIS, Flash ActionScript, Photoshop, Google Earth and Maps, iPhone SDK).

Prior to this role, Tad was Director of Computing and Research at Bowdoin College and led technical and project professionals in 3 units including Business Computing (enterprise solutions), Educational Research and Development (web site and educational software development), and Systems (data center enterprise-wide servers and storage). He joined the Bowdoin staff in 1987 as a database programmer. He rapidly advanced as the lead UNIX systems engineer; Manager of Systems and Communications (servers, networks, telephony); Acting Director; and Manager of the Cyber Technology Center. Under Tad's leadership, Bowdoin entered the world-wide web, wired the campus and created a virtual server infrastructure.

Before joining Bowdoin, Tad worked as a developer assigned to large complex economic simulations and modeling for the World Bank and Data Resources Inc.

Some projects he has helped or lead include:

  • The Maine Watershed Web - a site dedicated to collaborative watershed education, research and stewardship in the state of Maine. Data is collected by several field units deployed by the Geology Department, stored in a database, and graphed in near real-time.
  • The Bowdoin Buoy Facility - provides access to the data and research projects from a buoy that performs the continuous monitoring of Harpswell Sound, a water body with significant economic resources (fisheries, tourism), a rapid development of surrounding watershed, potentially problematic circulation characteristics, and recurrent annual harmful algal blooms. Bowdoin College’s buoy is part of the GoMOOS and University of Maine buoy family. Data from the buoy is collated and graphed for students, faculty and researchers.
  • Assisted with the creation of a Flash-based project that uses mapping to show the emergence of art galleries in Victorian London over a 15 year period. Tad performed the ArcGIS to Flash data extraction and conversion, and wrote ActionScript code.
  • Created an instructional tool that uses Google Maps API to present language quizzes (in Spanish) to test students knowledge of the names, nationalities, and capitals of Spanish speaking countries.
  • Recently, Tad has built a visualization model of time-series oceanographic data overlaying Google maps, created and student portals and custom portlets, and helped prototype iPhone applications.