Aaron Hillegass

Cocoa Instructor and consultant Aaron Hillegass has over 18 years of experience as a software engineer and developer trainer. He wrote the Big Nerd Ranch course on Cocoa, drawing from his experiences working at Apple Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc. as the senior trainer and curriculum developer.

Aaron is the author of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X. This book, published by Addison-Wesley, is generally regarded as "The Book" from which to learn Cocoa programming. He is also the co-author of Core Mac OS X and Unix Programming.

Aaron has developed and deployed very large systems using Cocoa, WebObjects, and/or PostgreSQL for clients including Cogent Design, Nortel Networks, and the United Parcel Service. He has taught at the University of Washington and the New College of Florida.

Juan Pablo Claude

Django Instructor and consultant Juan Pablo Claude is originally from Santiago, Chile and came to the US to attend graduate school in chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After earning his Ph.D., Juan Pablo became a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, teaching and doing research in the area of physical inorganic chemistry. In his research, Juan Pablo often had to write data acquisition analysis programs, leading to his interest in computer programming and technologies. After spending several years in academics, Juan Pablo decided to make a career out of computers. He joined the Big Nerd Ranch in late 2005 as a Cocoa and Django programmer.

Juan Pablo cut his teeth programming in C for PC's running DOS to squeeze data out of recalcitrant instruments during graduate school. He then moved on to write data analysis applications in C++ for Windows. When OS X was released he was immediately compelled to return to the Mac and he has never looked back ever since. These days he is delighted to write Objective-C and Python code in such a cooperative platform.

Mark Fenoglio

PHP & Objective-C Instructor and consultant Mark Fenoglio has over 10 years of experience in database and web-based application development in technologies ranging from SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and 4th Dimension to ASP, PHP, Ajax, Cocoa, and Objective-C. He was hired by the Big Nerd Ranch in September 2005 after asking too many annoying questions at the Cocoa Bootcamp that March.

When not slaving away at his computer, Mark puts his Masters Degree in Geophysics from Stanford University to good use by pounding away at rock walls in quarries, searching for elusive treasures for his mineral collection. (This activity is why he never mocks anyone else's hobbies.) A passionate Chicago Cubs and Penn State fan, Mark enjoys playing any sport where someone keeps score.

Stacey Goff

Ruby instructor and consultant Stacey Goff has a BS in mathematics from New College of Florida. She developed an interest in programming through modeling mathematical problems in C++ and Matlab. Stacey has worked as a Ruby on Rails consultant for Big Nerd Ranch since August 2007.

Joe Conway

Joe Conway has developed software with OpenGL and Cocoa for clients like Tops Software. He teaches the Big Nerd Ranch iPhone Development Bootcamp and does iPhone, Cocoa, and OpenGL consulting.

Scott Newman

Consulting director and Django consultant Scott Newman has over 10 years of experience as a web developer and programmer. After spending years working for a major media company as the system development manger deploying extremely large, mission-critical Django applications, he joined Big Nerd Ranch to keep the trains running on time for the consulting business. He is writing a book on Django for Packt Publishing, due out in December 2008. Scott is also a dotMobi Certified Mobile Web Developer and has extensive experience developing mobile and SMS-enabled web applications.

Jeremy Sherman

Cocoa and Cocoa Touch consultant Jeremy W. Sherman has a B.A. in Mathematics/Computer Science from New College of Florida. Jeremy joined the Big Nerd Ranch in 2008. When not working, Jeremy learns foreign languages, travels, and studies computer science, where his interests include program transformation (including compiler and interpreter design), functional programming, programming languages, and type theory.

Brian Hardy

Brian Hardy has been developing software in some form since a young age, with nearly a decade of professional experience building applications for the desktop and the web. He brings this experience to Big Nerd Ranch clients who need iPhone, Cocoa and Ruby on Rails development, particularly in applications where these technologies converge.