About A.Salim Doost

I am A. Salim Doost, born in `87, a passionate programmer and since recently officially a computer scientist (Master of Science degree). I have launched Virtualuna in January 2004 to present some of my hobby projects here. I have been grown up in Idar-Oberstein and I am still there sometimes.

Academic Career

I received my German Abitur in spring 2006 with Mathematics, Physics and English as advanced courses at the Gymnasium an der Heinzenwies (Abi2006). Immediately afterwards in the summer semester 2006 I started to study computer science at Saarland University. I received my Bachelor`s degree (grade: A) with Physics as minor after two and a half years (the official length of the program was three years). After that, I was in Japan at the University of Tokyo for a two-month research internship. Back in Germany I continued my computer science studies and finished it after one and a half years with a Master`s degree (M.Sc., grade: A, official length of the program was two years). My major field of studies were in Sofware-Engineering, Artificial Intelligence and E-Learning.

Practical Experience

Next to a few smaller internships and the two-month long research internship at the chair of Information Physics and Computing in Tokyo/Japan, I was a student assistant at the Software Engineering Chair. Since January 2010, I am a research assistant at the ActiveMath Group at Saarland University and at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). Among others, I am involved in the Math-Bridge project there.

Awards

• March 2006: Certificate for outstanding achievements in the German Abitur examinations (school leaving examinations)
• March 2006: Appreciation from the German Society for Physics (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, DPG) for outstanding grades in Physics
• October 2006: Admission to the Honor`s Program for Bachelor Students due to excellent performance during the first semester at University
• April 2008: Admission to the Saarbrücken Graduate School of Computer Science
• September 2008: Certificate for the successful completion of an IAESTE-internship program
• July 2010: Graduation with honors (Master of Science with Honor`s Degree)

More About me

I like to solve problems since I was young. As a programmer you constantly come across new smaller and sometimes even complex challenges which are waiting to be solved. Therefore, it really didn`t take long until programming became my biggest hobby. I began in summer 2006 and since then I have learned many different programming languages and techniques. The following programming languages had the the most impact on me:

• Visual Basic - my first programming language
• DIV Game Studio
• C++ (incl. WinAPI, DirectX 8, later on Qt)
• PHP & MySQL, JavaScript (also HTML and XML)
• Java

I am also a passionate (openSUSE) Linux user. However, my life is not only about technology and sciences. I play soccer, table tennis and speedminton (a variant of badminton) very often. For a while I was in a karate club as well.
Another big hobby of me is Japanese (and Japan). I like to watch Japanese movies and animations from time to time - which is a really good variation to Hollywood and Disney. I can recommend the (meanwhile world-famous) masterpieces by Hayao Miyazaki. Apart from that, I love arts. I even tried my best with digital arts: the best result was a petrol lamp.

If you want to get to know more about me, please don`t hesitate to contact me.