Russell I. Wakefield

Professor
Colorado State University
Office: CSB 240
Phone: (970) 491-2090
Fax: (970) 491-2466

Welcome!

After graduating from CSU in 1980 with a focus in operating systems, Russ worked as a kernel engineer for Control Data for 8 years, working on the CDC750, CDC205, and the ETA10. When ETA was mercilessly killed by the mother ship, he went on to do startups in Silicon Valley. These projects included a supercomputer for Evans & Sutherland, a symmetric multiprocessor database server for Pyramid Technology (that was fun), a voicemail server for Centigram Technologies (that was a disaster - imagine trying to debug a 16 slot ISA bus.... the clock signal at the outer slots looked like a seismograph in an earthquake), ending his technical career working on routers, network management, and VPN servers at Cisco Systems.

While at Pyramid Technology, Russ moved into management and began to get his yearly lobotomy. If you can translate between marketing speak and engineer speak - you can make a pretty good living in management. His groups at Pyramid included the kernel group, software quality assurance, release management, and project management. After a short stint as the Director of Customer Support at Centigram (a fate worse than being a Nuggets fan), Russ went to Cisco Systems in 1995 as a Director of Engineering where he worked for 7 years.

Retiring in 2001 - burnt out on people yelling about marketing-based software schedules - Russ opened an art gallery / wireless espresso bar in Red Feather Lakes and ran the business until 2005 when he sold it to move back to town. He worked for the county for a brief period as a business analyst before deciding to go back to school to get his PhD and teach - the current activity.

His goal is to finish his professional career teaching.