• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Alex Gessner

  • About
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Contact
  • Blog

About

I think about systems; I design for failure; I write well-tested software; I wish I were less snobby about coffee.

Alex Gessner

I recently convinced someone that I’m worth marrying. She and I just got back from a 4 month life-sabbatical / honeymoon (luna de miel). If you’re curious, I kept a photo blog of the trip in which I posted exactly one photo per day.

In my previous career, I was an engineer/manager/all-things-data at Shopkeep.

I had a failed startup in 2012 called AgreeThePeople. It was about understanding disagreement and opinion-spaces by finding equilibrium within an issue. If that’s interesting to you at all, read more here.

I dropped out of a PhD program at UVA with a Masters in Systems Engineering in 2012. There was some prediction work around wireless transmissions from ambulances in rural Virginia and some papers and a continuing effort called STEMISEND.

I wrote the original wikipedia article on Insect Flight.

Here are some other interests of mine right now: decentralized systems and distributed computing, how much better the world could be if cryptography were easy, opinionated frameworks, databases, anagrams and wordplay, voting systems, not updating this list.

  • About
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Contact
  • Blog