Jerome Jahnke's Page

Jerome Jahnke

Welcome to the page of Jerome Jahnke. Currently I serve as a Vice President for Bank of America, working specifically on enterprise security infrastructure. For 3 years prior to this gig I worked for Motorola on VoiceXML. And for the 10 years before that I was working at universities researching technology in the biology curricula.

Some of my Bank of America work includes:

Authentication and Identity Services: I am currently the manager of the AIS Team. We are 40 people strong working on developing an integrated way to handle user identity and authentication for the entire Bank of America Enterprise.
UUM: Unified User Management a middle-ware which helps protect the banks large directories of user information from developers throughout the bank. We are currently scaling this system up to deal with over 100 million unique users and all the associated attributes.
Delegated Administration: A set of tools to allow customers of the bank add records into the banks data stores. As one might imagine this is a minefield of security issues. The tool is designed to shield the information security requirements from the application developers. I get to meet a lot of real serious types working on this.
Process Improvement: Motorola is filled with process monsters. In uncertain economic times resources must be maximized. So developing better software faster and for less cost is the goal. Process helps by giving some objective means to compare development efforts, with objective numeric values changes can be tracked and deemed effective or not effective, ineffective efforts should be eliminated. And since I learned it at Mot I get to do it some here.
Authentication Framework: When a user logs into any B of A web app they should be using the AF. Which is an extremely flexible set of serverside components to make sure consistent and secure information security standards are applied to all web application.
Mail Component: When a user's password is reset they need a mail message sent to them notifying them of this event. The tool is flexible allowing for multiple kinds of MTA's to send the email.

Some of my Motorola work includes:

Multi-modal Fusion Server: A way to combine voice to other web modalities. So you can speak to a web page, or a WAP page. Or have an SMS message answer a voice query. Lotsa cool work with this. We applied for 7 patents based on this work.
Voice Browser: The crown jewel of what we did. Hands down best and most mature Voice-Browser on the market. A number of organizations both within Motorola and outside of Motorola license this. Just look for press releases with Motorola and VoiceXML in them. This is that browser.
The Voice Developers Gateway: A product too good to die. Mot didn't want it. But when we made it they couldn't kill it. It currently isn't offered, by Motorola, but other companies are selling it as their own gateway.
Mobile Application Developers Toolkit: A free toolkit for voice and WAP development. We were two years ahead of the multi-modal party with this toolkit. You might sense a trend here but Mot currently isn't offering this for sale either. But it is embedded in other third party tools.
VoiceXML: I have to say being at the birth of a movement is COOL. Watching an idea take shape and then become something beyond your ability to control or influence has been pretty awesome. I hope I get to do it again some day.

Some of my U of C work includes:

bioGENErator: PCR in a teacup, how cool is that? Another device I am amazed to find a LOT of kids have used. U of C still owes me money on this invention.
The SAD Paper Online: An acceptable reason to spit in school. The shame here is that this Database got lost. I have the original source but none of the data. It was a great tool and it's loss still hurts.
Haptics and Biology: Reach out and touch someone. I imagine at some point this experience will be useful in the entertainment industry. A while back at a SIGGraph show someone had a haptic device display a model of a nude member of what ever sex you were interested in. Needless to say the line for the female model was a LOT longer than the line for the male model. My other haptics story involves with publishers of the game Postal asking me about developing some tools that would let game players feel what it felt like to cut human flesh.
Phaco-VR: Wanna poke someone's eye out? One might think that a surgical simulator would be used to train surgeons. One would be wrong. This one was developed specifically for spotting people who would NOT have the ability to cut it as a surgeon. The line I remember is "We want to use this to gently point out to potential surgeons that perhaps pathology is where their futures lie."

Some of my U of A work includes:

MacMolecule: I can't believe how many people have used this piece of software. We knew it was revolutionary for it's time. But man... Young people tell me often how much they loved just screwing that that program.
Biology Learning Center: In 1989 I was tasked with creating an instructional computing lab. I got an old research lab that was still radioactive. The lab still exists and is stronger than ever (it moved from the radioactive lab into it's own space in a new building two years later.) I remember when teaching instructors how to use PowerPoint was state of the art. They have come a long way. My buddy Jim Lowell still runs the place.
Worm Community System: The hallmark of my tenure at the U of A was taking tools that researchers used and making them accessible to students. I did some work with this to make it something students could use. It was in almost every sense of the world a competitor for the World Wide Web. Needless to say it was a nice swing and a miss.
Undergraduate Biology Research Program: I was not core to this, but proud to be a player early on. What I loved best about this program is the once a year presentation of the work the students do. The research these undergrads did was both good science and important science. I am sure this program has produced many quality scientists over the years.

Some of my current not work includes:

Green Bay Packers: It ain't football, it's a religious experience. I still go up to all the games.
Books I read: Someone complained I had more work stuff than not work stuff... Like you care what I read.
Mr. Jahnke moves to the burbs: Jeri got REALLY tired of the city so we moved west.
Our Little House on the Prairie: Jeri wanted a low maintenance yard, oddly enough this is.
Mr. Jahnke has plenty of room: Ok... So burb living ain't so bad.
It has been dubbed the toolputer: My pop had some specific requirements for a "laptop" this how my brother and I interpreted it.
DvDo: So I am too lazy to get up and put a DVD into the DVD player. I don't have kids to do it for me. So I decided to put all my DVD's on a server but it needs a lot of space. Behold my teeny terabyte server.