Fun facts about new staff!

Get to know three new coworkers through their answers to fun and goofy questions. Keep reading for a special “throwback” fun facts with an Enterprises’ colleague.


James Wyman, Software Engineering Manager – MyUPMC Mobile

Do you have any kids? Any pets? I have 2 girls. One is 5 years old and one 2 years old. I have 2 dogs, a Labrador and a Golden Retriever mix.

Are you a Pittsburgh local or did you grow up elsewhere? I grew up in Houston and Philadelphia. I graduated from high school in Bucks County and graduated from College at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville Texas.

Do you have an unusual talent or hobby? I enjoyed painting mini figs and did Warhammer fantasy and Warhammer 40k before I had kids.


Bradley Wheeler, Software Engineer – Machine Learning Team

Are you a Pittsburgh local or did you grow up elsewhere? I grew up in Erie, PA and moved to the Burgh for school. I found Pittsburgh to be an awesome place to live and I have stuck around ever since.

Do you have an unusual talent or hobby? I compete internationally in swing dancing and have danced and taught all over the United States, Canada, and Europe.

What’s in your perfect meal? I love the pollo con mole poblano they serve at the restaurants in Old Town San Diego!


Val Harrison, Director, Partner Relations – Center for Connected Medicine

Are you a Pittsburgh local or did you grow up elsewhere? Grew up north of Pittsburgh in Butler, lived overseas for a while, and now live on the North Side of Pittsburgh.

Do you have any kids? Any pets? A black cat named Charlie.

Do you have an unusual talent or hobby? I speak Turkish.

Where in the universe would you like to visit someday? French Polynesia.

What’s in your perfect meal? Cookie Dough.

If any musician or band could give you a personal concert, who would it be? Beyonce.

Which is better: board games or video games? Board Games.


Throwback Fun Facts!

Brian Black (Bj), Senior Software Engineer – DSO

How did you get into the industry? When I was younger, about 8 or 9, my uncle introduced me to the amiga, as well as the commodore 64, as well as different programming language books. Though he used the systems for games, my interest was in the software that controlled the hardware, the “OS.”  As such, my first self-taught programming language was C.

How long have you been working at UPMCE? My Start date was 5-13-2013. Just completed 6 full years.

What’s changed the most since you started here? All of your lovely faces. 😛

Thinking about your work, what is the funniest thing you used to use tech-wise that you don’t use anymore? Hands down, ISD-managed resources. Since we have moved to cloud offerings, we now have more control over items that we here at UPMCE need.

As technology has evolved throughout the years, what stands out to you the most? Systems have gotten smaller, faster, and cheaper. One of my first PC’s was a Packard Bell Legend, which came with a whopping 75mb of disk storage and 8mb of ram for the cost of about $1000. Today the Raspberry Pi comes with a quad-core 1.2GHz processor with 1gb of ram for about $50.

What’s your favorite part about working here? I love to work around like-minded, logical, software-focused, people.

Do you have an unusual talent or hobby? I am a high-level amateur pool player who also competes in regional/national events.

Share any fun fact! To this day I still enjoy building custom PC’s with HPC, high-performance computing, in mind. In addition, my favorite distribution of Linux is still Gentoo. 🙂

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