The Austin Val Verde Estate and Foundation...
Alexey Ushakov, Director of Multi Media and Educational Content
P.O. Box 5519
Santa Barbara, CA 93150-5519
(805) 969-9852
Cell (805) 452-2478
Fax (805) 969-9852
aushako@hotmail.com
Alexey Ushakov is an information technology (IT) expert who has spent more than fifteen years pioneering IT applications in educational systems. He has effectively managed multinational technical project teams and developed systems software in diverse multi-platform environments. Mr. Ushakov uses his multi-faceted technical, business and educational capacities to achieve the exciting educational development goals at the Austin Val Verde Foundation. He applies the most advanced software and technology to the foundation's educational programs and constantly expands the foundations' educational scope.
"We take advantage of the fascinating, beautiful and historic aspects of the Austin Val Verde Foundation site by providing scholars, children and families with learning experiences through the medium of the internet," says Ushakov whose talents make Austin Val Verde Foundation's rich resources available to students everywhere through virtual access. Since actual visits to the Austin Val Verde Foundation are on an invitational basis, its directors promote and encourage educational discourse over the internet and will provide access to many intellectual properties online. Regular and motivated participants of Austin Val Verde Foundation virtual education will be invited to come stay at the Austin Val Verde Foundation to explore further study on the 17-acre grounds. Besides chemistry, biology, horticulture and even physics projects, students can investigate many aesthetic arts such as architecture, landscape and fine art.
Mr. Ushakov manages another project that he hopes will inspire many study projects: habitat restoration work to aid the conservation of the endangered steelhead trout that lives in Montecito Creek, a large length of which runs through the Austin Val Verde Foundation grounds. Mr. Ushavov's multi media mastery provides students with the use of high-technology aids such as the ability to monitor natural processes and make them visible online.
As Development Coordinator of the Alexandria Digital Libraries Project at UC Santa Barbara, Mr. Ushakov supervised the mapping of digital library metadata into an interoperable format and designed a complex, feature-rich innovative user interface for an interactive learning environment. He provided technical leadership and coordinated development within a large-scale distributed digital library system, supporting organization, publication, discovery, and use of geo-referenced documents and was a principal developer of the Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). VLE enables users to organize and integrate a content knowledge and DL learning objects and provides anytime, anywhere access to those materials. VLE is browser-based, easy-to-use and accessible in schools with Internet Explorer. VLE is currently employed in teaching several undergraduate Geography courses at UCSB and UCLA. The system could be distributed as an educational service for the National Science Digital Library.
Along with his excellent communication skills, science knowledge, profound understanding of cross-cultural issues, and experience in successful resolution techniques, Alexey Ushakov has a proven record of timely delivery of projects, has evaluated, selected and integrated vendor technologies to create robust scalable solutions, and collected hardware and software requirements and managed client interactions and expectations on numerous IT projects. He is skilled in Internet technologies HTTP, HTML, XML/XSLT, JavaScript and Java application server development and has a thorough foundation in object-oriented design and analysis in Java and C++.
Mr. Ushakov was Director of Development for Vostok, LLC in collaboration with University of Northern Colorado from 1995-2001, where he oversaw and facilitated the successful full-cycle development, QA and shipping of a leading educational shrink-wrapped software system. He negotiated with publishing companies, foundations and government representatives and evaluated and selected vendor solutions for creating and integrating multimedia system components (video production, authoring, digitizing).
Project ChemQuest (copyrighted name - ChemDiscovery) was developed, evaluated, and published as an innovative technology-based interactive high school chemistry curriculum for students and teachers with different abilities, spheres of interest, and backgrounds. Being a novel technology-based learning environment, a ChemQuest classroom changes the roles of teachers from lecturers to facilitators and collaborators, providing the possibility to work independently. ChemDiscovery is currently distributed nationwide.
In his native Russia, Mr. Ushakov was Vice-President of Technology for the Computer Distribution Center KUDITS, Moscow, where he developed the technical strategy and streamlined the business practices of a computing solutions company dedicated to creating custom-tailored IT solutions for educational and private sectors. He established and directed business partnerships with American, Hungarian, and Russian companies and oversaw the installation of over a thousand networked computer classrooms in pilot schools in the Russian Federation.
Mr. Ushakov has received 17 grants and awards from American and international foundations and agencies and is the author of numerous professional and peer-reviewed publications. With a MBA from the University of Colorado at Denver and a MS and BS from the Moscow University of Electronic Machinery where he majored in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Mr. Ushakov is well-equipped to perform the demanding and creative IT, managerial and educational duties that bring Austin Val Verde Foundation students of all ages and backgrounds informal science, history, architecture, landscape art, botany, chemistry and environmental conservation lessons via the internet.
At Austin Val Verde Foundation, Mr. Ushakov strives to provide students of all levels with a personal way to share the great heritage that Dr. Austin left to the community. He appreciates the profound beauty of the Val Verde estate that he views as a living museum that should be both preserved and shared. He is excited about running educational programs that provide direct connections between the directors of Austin Val Verde Foundation and their intellectual audience. Like the Austin Val Verde Foundation itself, Mr. Ushakov is a multi-faceted, colorful and creative resource.
