Seneca College - RED 2016 - 32

their own space program for his idea. I thought, 'What
could I do in underwater diving that would be uncharted?' I started looking at high-altitude diving."
By high-altitude diving, Zac means deep water dives
into bodies at high altitudes, like in the Himalayas.
A passionate environmentalist, he had been learning
about the effects of global warming on glaciers-melting them into deep, unstable water bodies that can
wash away communities below them.
Conducting dives in these waters, Zac, and colleagues at his company, Vanguard, can gain a better
understanding of the dangers of melting glaciers and
share the information locally to help detect and prevent disasters.
"I understand the magnitude of what we are facing
as a species," say Zac. "If a commercial diver can figure
out how to do something about climate change on top of
the world, I would hope that might serve as inspiration
for others to see what they can do in their backyards."
Bradly Hoover, a Computer Programming and
Analysis graduate, now Software Development degree
student, is also having a global impact, thanks to his
interest in video gaming processors.
His work with a program called Travel, has helped
to speed up calculations being done at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland. These calculations are used in CERN's linear
accelerators to smash atoms into elementary particles.
"The accelerators take beams of particles of lead
or gold and spins them around at 99.99 per cent the
speed of light," explains Bradly. "It then smashes them
together, and, from the results, scientists can simulate
conditions around the time of the Big Bang."
This project developed when Bradly expressed a
desire to try writing programming for high performance graphics processing units. Professor Chris Szalwinski reached out to a contact at CERN, and Bradly
was in. The result was performance that was 72 times
faster in certain instances; what used to take months
could now be accomplished in days.
During his studies, Bradly has been teaching as well.
He wants to provide his students the kinds of opportunities Chris made possible for him.

32 RED

2016

Left:
Bradly Hoover's
groundbreaking work
at CERN began with a
professor's connection.
Right:
Ali Al Dallal came to Seneca
via Iraq and Thailand and
began his career at Mozilla
with a co-op placement.

"If a student comes to me and says, 'I'm really interested in this,' then I am going to find all the information
I possibly can, and guide them to where they want to
go," says Bradly.
Another Seneca grad interested in using computers
for good was inspired by his fascination with Apple
products, much to the chagrin of Silicon Valley.
Ali Al Dallal, who was born in Iraq, grew up in
Thailand and found his way to Seneca's Computer
Sciences program, because he was, a self-proclaimed
"Apple fan-boy." He was always developing new software to hack his phone, and he'd blog about Apple's
new initiatives in Thai. Apple wasn't impressed.
"I had 30,000 followers on Facebook at the time,"
says Ali. "People followed me because they didn't
understand English, and they loved Apple stuff. But
Apple shut me down. They thought that I was stealing
their business."
Ali has since turned his attention to bringing the
Internet to people in remote regions, through his
work with the Mozilla Foundation and now with
Scotiabank. His experience with Mozilla started with
a Seneca co-op placement. Now Ali works on developing infrastructure for people around the world to
access the Internet in their own languages, and within
appropriate cultural context-a process known as
"localization." It's not just Ali's computer skills that
make him a perfect fit for this kind of work.
"My multicultural background allows me to understand how things work within different communities,"
says Ali. "Localization isn't just translating words.
You still have to understand the culture."
So whether it's a commercial diver tackling climate
change in the Himalayas, a computer programmer who
applies gaming theory to improve understanding about
the universe, or a hacker working to localize the
Internet, Seneca graduates are lending their talents and
passions-and technology-to evoke positive change.

My multicultural
background
allows me to
understand how
things work
within different
communities.

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