DB2 student ambassadors

Raghuveer Babu T.R. is a Computer Science and engineering student in his final year at K.L.N. College of Information Technology, India. He has been a DB2 Student Ambassador since March of 2008, and has been helping students to learn DB2 and other IBM products. Raghuveer took the initiative to start a DB2 User Community (He is currently the Chairman of this community) to promote more DB2 Student Ambassadors in his region and also promoted the TGMC (The Great Mind Challenge) project contest attaining the most number of teams in his college.

Raghuveer has great passion for all technical fields. He is a certified database associate for DB2 v8.1, and also has a ‘Developing Enterprise Applications using .NET Framework’ in NIIT certification, as well as the Ankit Fadia Certified Ethical Hacker V3.0.

Raghuveer is proficient in C, C++, C#.NET, VB.NET, Java, HTML, CSS, ASP.NET, Adobe Flex V3, XML, MS Access 2007, IBM DB2 V9.5, MS SQL Server 2008, MS Visual Studio 2008, Power Director V7, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, Illustrator CS3. He also designed his college's Web site: www.klncit.info

Raghuveer's hobbies include chatting on the Web, designing and developing applications, and surfing the Web.

Wellington Sampaio is a student at PUCPR in Curitiba, Brazil. Alongside a few classmates, Wellington started the  DB2@PUCPR  DB2 user group activities in September of 2007.

Since 2007, DB2@PUCPR has been helping students at PUCPR prepare themselves for IBM DB2 9 Fundamentals Certification. Wellington became a certified DB2 professional in August of 2008 and is currently helping his friends in the final stage of the certification preparation.

Wellington likes to code applications in Java, C#, Adobe Flex and is very interested in databases (especially DB2), software architecture and web applications.

Wellington loves to read books and sometimes write short stories. He also loves auto racing and racing simulators.

You can check Wellington writings about DB2, at:
http://wellingtonsampaio.wordpress.com/tag/db2/

S. Rama Raajun is a master's student at Thiagarajar College of Engineering, in Madurai, India. He became a DB2 student ambassador in January of 2008 and led the creation of a DB2 User Group in his school. S.Rama promoted DB2 Express-C usage in his school helping fellow students with DB2 questions. More than 130 downloads of the software can be credited to his efforts. S.Rama has recently been hired by IBM India, and being a DB2 Student Ambassador was helpful to achieve this goal.

S.Rama likes to code in C, C++, COBOL, and Visual Basic. His interests are in Relational Database Management Systems and Grid Computing.

In his spare time, S.Rama likes to play with gadgets, listen to Indian classical music and pratice motor sports.

Qijie Shen is a student at Guang Dong University of Technology (GDUT) in China. He is pursing a Master’s degree in Computer Science. Qijie became a DB2 student ambassador in 2007 and led the team that translated the book "Getting started with DB2 Express-C" from English to Simplified Chinese. He was also a key contributor in building the community DB2 on Campus portal.

Qijie likes to code in C#, C++, and Python. His interests are in software engineering, cryptography, Web applications, databases and AJAX technologies. Qijie is also active helping small businesses build their Web sites using ASP.

Qijie likes to play soccer and badminton every week, and enjoys jogging. Every two or three days, he jogs for about 5km. In his spare time, Qijie enjoys watching movies and listening to music.

Sergio Matone is a 23 years old Computer Science university student from the Politecnico di Torino university in Torino, Italy. He became a DB2 student Ambassador late in 2007 and is currently involved in a project that is switching the database being used to DB2 express-C. He has also worked with several techniques about Data Mining in particular for classification and clustering.

Sergio is very interested in the interaction of DB2 with Web 2.0, and is particularly interested in working with DB2 and Ruby on Rails. In parallel to his routine student activities, Sergio is spreading the advantages of DB2 express-C in his college. He has created a DB2 User Group as part of the Politecnico di Torino network in Facebook.com, and is using this group to inform students of his past and future DB2 activities and events.

Sergio is interested in developing and working with distributed applications and Web services, exploiting languages such as Java, C# and C/C++. Moreover, he likes scripting languages such as Python and Ruby. Sergio enjoys working with Open Source applications and operating systems like Linux. Right now he is having a lot of fun with Mac OS/X.

In his spare time, Sergio likes to play the guitar, and to work with images and video editing. He also likes to snowboard as much as possible during the winter.

Nuno Job Pinto is a student at the Universidade do Minho in Portugal pursing a Master of Science degree in Computer Science. Some of the fields of his study include Software Architecture, Cryptography, Web Services, Web Applications, Scripting and XML.

Nuno is one of the first Portuguese DB2 Student ambassadors. He developed the DB2 Minho User Group Web site (http://caos.di.uminho.pt/~db2) and has made every effort to support the group and replicate the DB2 on Campus speeches and courses. He has also contacted other universities in Portugal in order to establish DB2 student groups there.

Furthermore, Nuno will use DB2 in his Masters' project combining XML and xForms technologies.

Nuno likes to code in Ruby, but he is also proficient in C#, Java, and C. He is mostly interested in developing applications for the web and in user interfaces/usability.

Desireè Suguy, Fábio Tomio, and Guilherme Fortes are students at the UniFAE University Center in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. They are pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Enterprise Information Systems and are responsible for the creation of the first DB2 User group in Curitiba, Brazil, with the help of the Andrea Rodacki (IBM), who is their DB2 coach.

Desireè works at HSBC Bank where she is acquiring mainframe, Java, UNIX, and system's modeling knowledge. Fábio works with WEB development systems using Adobe Flex and PHP. Guilherme works at TIM as specialist in mobile communications. Their enthusiasm and skills have been essential in the creation of the first DB2 Brazilian group of studies in Curitiba.

Their main objectives are to help the Brazilian community with the promotion of DB2 lectures; translation of IBM DB2 Express-C presentations to Portuguese and, to attain the IBM DB2 Database Associate certification by passing Exam 730. For this last objective they are organizing an extension course at UniFAE. In their spare time, Desireè likes to dance and go out with her friends; Fábio likes going to the beach and research emergent Web technologies; and Guilherme likes to play samba and to go out with his friends.

Hi! My name is Carlos Gonzalez and I am from Mexico city. I'm pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering at the Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (FI-UNAM).

I'm the coordinator of the database section of the PROTECO team, which is a program focused on the formation and development of human resources in IT, at the FI. As a part of my activities in this group I have taught courses of C, Java, PHP and Oracle. I also handle JavaScript, PLSQL and Python.

I have experience as an instructor. In fact, I started teaching classes at a computer school when I was 17. Currently, I work in a computer systems development enterprise, in the network monitoring area.

I'm the president of the DB2 User Group at the FI. I was one of the founders of this group, have helped translate some of the DB2 Express-C tutorials, and gave a conference to spread our activities and encourage our classmates to join the team. My current goal is to become a DBA in DB2.

I have many hobbies, one of them is playing computer games. I enjoy listening to trova music, reading Jules Verne's books and going to the movies. I also like surrealistic painting.

Lang Ley Cheong is a student at the University Technical Malaysia Malacca (UTeM) in Malaysia where she is pursuing a Computer Science degree majoring in Software Engineering, and is in her fourth year of studies. Lang Ley is the first DB2 student ambassador selected in Malaysia.

Lang Ley worked as an IBM Malaysia intern for 5 months in the Technical Sales Support (TSS) department. As part of her duties, she developed a Web based reporting system with PHP and DB2 Express-C using Zendcore for IBM. With no previous knowledge of DB2, Lang Ley was able to finish this system in approximately one month. In her own words "learning DB2 was a lot easier than learning Oracle, and the application developed felt less heavy than if I had used Oracle".

Lang Ley will return to school soon, and will further promote the DB2 User Group she has established. Her goal is to reach other universities as well, and to incorporate DB2 as part of the subject of studies in her university. Currently, Lang Ley is organizing a 2-Day DB2 workshop, and plans to replicate the speeches and lectures of the DB2 on Campus program to teachers and students of her university and other universities. Organizing a DB2 certification exam event is next in her list, and her goal is to attain the DB2 Database Associate IBM certification by passing the DB2 Fundamentals exam 730 this year.

Lang Ley loves dancing. She is a certified professional ballet, modern, jazz and hip hop dance instructor full-time! She is blogging about DB2 at http://db2my.vox.com, and has signed up to be part of planetDB2.com, for blog aggregation. You can reach her by email at either of these addresses: db2my@yahoo.com or db2my@zoomshare.com.

Sara Perez is a student at the Universidad Tecnologica de Mexico (UNITEC) in Mexico City. Sara is pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, and is currently working on her thesis using J2EE technology. Sara is the president of the DB2 User Group at  UNITEC . Her enthusiasm and skills were key in the creation of the group, the first one in Mexico as a result of the DB2 on Campus program. Sara has helped translate several of the DB2 Express-C presentations to Spanish, and along with her mentor, Miguel Angel Garcia Trujillo, and the rest of the members of the group, she has designed a model to run the group, and is planning to use this model as a template to start other DB2 user groups in other universities.

Sara's goals for this year is to get the certification as a Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 platform, and to attain the DB2 Database Associate IBM certification by passing the DB2 Fundamentals exam 730. For this last goal, she is working hard to organize preparation courses.

Sara enjoys going to the movies and dancing. In her spare time, she enjoys going out with her friends, and going to the beach.

Mario Piz is a student at the Universidad Tecnologica Nacional (UTN) in Resistencia, Argentina. Mario is pursuing a Systems Engineering degree and is in his fourth year of studies. Mario was the first DB2 student ambassador selected worldwide since the program was started in 2006. His enthusiasm and skills were key in the creation of the first DB2 User Group at a university worldwide. Mario is the president of this group, and actively organizes events in conjunction with the other group members.

Mario administers one of the computer science labs at the university. He is a one star programer in .NET, and has been programming in Smalltalk for many years. Mario is now learning Java (J2SE), and is currently preparing to write exam 730 to become an IBM DB2 Certified Database Associate.

Mario likes adventure sports such as mountain biking and canoeing. In his free time, he enjoys going to the beach and fishing.