Adnan Masood, Ph.D. is a developer, software architect, and researcher and specializes in machine learning and Bayesian belief networks. He is an avid engineer and is most comfortable working with the IDE. Before joining Green Dot Corporation, a leading prepaid financial technology institution, he enjoyed life as a principal engineer of a start-up and worked for a leading UK nonprofit organization as a solutions architect.

A strong believer in the development community, Adnan is an active member of the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), an organization dedicated to software security. In the .NET community, he is a cofounder and president of the Pasadena .NET Developers group, which he has been successfully leading for 8 years. He pursues interests in algorithmic puzzles, machine learning, functional programming, cloud computing, service-oriented architecture (SOA), .NET, design patterns, application security, and robotics. He has also led a number of successful enterprise solutions and consulted for several Fortune 500 company projects.

Adnan devotes himself to his own continual, practical education. He holds certifications in big data, machine learning, and systems architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology; an Application Security certification from Stanford University; an SOA Smarts certification from Carnegie Mellon University; and certifications as a ScrumMaster, Microsoft Certified Trainer, Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer, and Sun Certified Java Developer.

Adnan has taught Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) courses at the University of California, San Diego, and loves to conduct presentations at top academic and technology conferences (for example, IEEE-HST, IASA, and DevConnections), local code camps, and user groups. He is also a volunteer FLL robotics coach for middle school students at Universal Academy of Florida.

At home, his two very energetic boys, Zakariya and Ali, keep him busy—but not quite busy enough to keep him from compulsively buying (though not always reading) books in all formats. Adnan defines Pluto as a planet, chocolate as a food group, and A Game of Thrones as historical fiction.

For more details, visit Adnan's blog (http://blog.adnanmasood.com), GitHub repository (http://github.com/adnanmasood), and Twitter (@adnanmasood). Adnan can be reached at adnan.masood@owasp.org.