Inc. Magazine named Christine Do ’80 a top 10 Asian entrepreneur in 2010 and 2011. The Vietnam native and Soft Tech Consulting founder used math to bridge the language gap and make a career in computers.

An Inc. Magazine top 10 Asian entrepreneur in each of the past two years, Christine came to America at 17 as a refugee of the Vietnam War. Today she owns and operates Washington, D.C.-based Soft Tech Consulting, which works with several federal agencies developing, supporting and securing software.

Determining that a math-based discipline would be the best way around her language barrier, Christine came to Oswego after one year of high school in the Finger Lakes town of Phelps.

“At the time, computers were just in their beginning,” Christine recalled. “There weren’t many colleges offering computer science in New York.”

Professor Christine Semeniuke and Dr. Mao, along  with then-department chair Robert Sebesta nurtured Christine’s love of computers that helped her develop a career that began at Unisys.

“Once you have the foundations of computers, you can build on that,” she said.

Christine started Soft Tech in 1996 as a one-woman shop and finally expanded in 2005.

“I feel so honored to be able to help the federal government to do things more efficiently,” she says. “They are passionate about their missions.”

And she is passionate about her work — 16 hours a day, seven days a week as she describes it. “I’m always in front of a monitor,” she says.

A front-runner in her industry, Christine gives equal credit to her team and the place where her professional dreams began.

“It is one of the gems of the [state] university system,” Christine says of Oswego. “And I am proud to have been a part of it.”

Marianne Hromalik, a new computer science faculty member, completed her post-doctoral work at Cornell University last spring, but the “homework” has kept right on coming.

Cornell’s Laboratory for Atomic and Solid State Physics has subcontracted Hromalik, under a Department of Energy Grant, to work on programming a versatile detector for X-rays used to examine the structure of viruses and proteins, to monitor materials fatigue in aircraft parts and to do much more.

Marianne Hromalik, assistant professor of computer science, displays a computer circuit board that includes a detector (bottom right gray rectangle) of the type used to capture and store X-ray data used in scientific research.

Hromalik is a native of the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago with a doctorate from the University of Sussex in England.

Cornell researchers, Oswego computer science chair Douglas Lea ’86 and Hromalik are working with computer science major Benjamin Paretzky ’11 on perfecting another detector developed in the larger grant.

Meanwhile, Hromalik is teaching courses in computer science that eventually will form part of the requirements of the new electrical and computer engineering program, now in development.

Rachid Manseur, associate professor of computer science, leads the effort to create the new engineering program, with Adrian Ieta, assistant professor of physics, and Hromalik.