Nicolas Mesa's Personal Site

Nicolas Mesa gold medal trick skiing National Sea and Beach games, San Andres, Colombia

About me

Hello and welcome to my personal web site. As you may have guessed, my name is Nicolas Mesa. I am a computer scientist who also loves water skiing. I graduated as an Informatics Engineer from the Escuela de Ingerniería de Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia.

Since January 2012, I have worked as a Software Engineer for AliadosWeb. I began this job with the objective of gaining professional experience in software engineering by learning from talented mentors while continuing with my university studies, working as a math tutor and teaching people to water ski.

On August 2014, I moved to New York City to start my Master's in Computer Science at Columbia University. During this time I have been improving my software development skills and learning a lot about different types of systems.

On May 2015, I started to work for Amazon as a Software Engineer Intern. During this internship I had the opportunity to learn from very talented Software Engineers and also learned how big companies work.

Complementing my computer science activities, I also practice water skiing. I started when I was nine, and I have loved it ever since. For years, I have trained every weekend, and ended up becoming a coach when I was 17. Additionally, I represented my country in the 2008 Pan American Championships and 2006 Latin American Championships. While my professional endeavors take precedence now, I still go to some water ski competitions and even won a couple of times this year.

On a personal note, I am the oldest of four children, and part of a very united family that loves to spend the weekends together in our house near the lake where I ski.

Feel free to browse through the site, and if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me!

Education

Master of Science (M.Sc), Computer Science

2014 - 2015 (expected)

Columbia University

New York City, United States of America

Informatics Engineer

2008 - 2013

Escuela de Ingenieria de Antioquia

Envigado, Colombia

High School

2004 - 2008

The Columbus School

Envigado, Colombia

Courses

Computer Networks

2014

Coursera

Online

Programming of mobile devices under the Android operating system

2013

Escuela de Ingenieria de Antioquia

Envigado, Colombia

Programming Paradigms

2013

Udemy - Stanford University

Online

Cyberterrorism

2013

Escuela de Ingenieria de Antioquia

Envigado, Colombia

Network and security

2011 - 2012

Escuela de Ingenieria de Antioquia

Envigado, Colombia

Work Experience

Software Development Engineer (Intern)

2015

Amazon

Seattle, Washington

I successfully created and deployed a dashboard to help managers get an insight on how customers behave. I used different technologies to develop this dashboard including Java, DynamoDB, SQS, HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Lead Software Engineer

2012 - 2014

AliadosWeb

Medellin, Colombia

I have participated in the development some applications such as Seguridad en línea which is an application that is being used by the governments of Medellín and Bogotá (the two most important cities in Colombia). The purpose of this application is to make these cities safer by allowing its users to report crime anonymously. I feel extremely proud of working in this project because I feel that I'm contributing in making this country safer.

I was also the lead developer of Alegra which is a book keeping application for small and medium size companies that is delivered through the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. This model makes the application much more affordable than licensed software which is exactly what a small company needs.

Working in these projects, I gained great experience in programming in back end and front end environments. I also acquired others skills such as Linux production server configuration, database design and mobile development using HTML5 technologies

Math tutor

2011 - 2014

The Columbus School Alumni

Medellin, Colombia

During this period, I worked with alumni from different grades, supporting them through their high school math courses

Water skiing coach

2006 - 2013

Club Campestre Medellin

Rionegro, Colombia

I worked during this period, teaching people of any age and skill set, including high performance water skier, to water ski. In this job, I developed important skills such as tolerance, patience, punctuality, discipline and leadership.

Languages

Spanish

Native language

English

Full professional proficiency
TOEFL iBT: 108 July 2013

Recognitions & Awards

Best GPA from graduation cohort

2013

Escuela de Ingenieria de Antioquia

Envigado, Colombia

Honor roll in the Informatics Engineering department

2011

Escuela de Ingenieria de Antioquia

Envigado, Colombia

Honor roll in the Informatics Engineering department

2011

Escuela de Ingenieria de Antioquia

Envigado, Colombia

Outstanding in the math component

2010

ACOFI

Medellin, Colombia

Honor roll in the Informatics Engineering department

2010

Escuela de Ingenieria de Antioquia

Envigado, Colombia

Gold medal in tricks

August 2013

National beach and sea games

San Andres, Colombia

Silver medal in Slalom, Tricks and Overall

November 2012

Water ski national championship

Rionegro, Colombia

Skills

  • PHP
  • JavaScript
  • MySQL
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Linux
  • Java
  • Git
  • C
  • ExtJS
  • Sencha
  • Zend Framework
  • Sencha Touch
  • AWS
  • Amazon EC2
  • Amazon S3
  • Amazon CloudFront
  • Node.js
  • HTTP
  • TCP/IP