Applico Profile: Thomas Karam, Director of Android Engineering

“Do or do not, there is no try” – Yoda

As part of a series showcasing our wonderful employees, we’re featuring one member of our team each month. This month we’re introducing you to Thomas Karam, Director for Android Engineering. Read below to learn a little more about Thomas!

Thomas Karam

Best dish that you cook?– My best dish is sauerbraten, and it happens to be my favorite too! While my family mostly identifies with our Middle Eastern ancestry, my personal taste aligns more with the food from my German roots. Served with some red cabbage and spätzle, sauerbraten can’t be beat.
Favorite memory of the past year? – My fiancée saying yes when I proposed to her! It was amazing!
At the office I… – play pool a lot
Coolest project you worked on?– My favorite project was a Bitcoin exchange app. The app allowed people to check the current market value of Bitcoins and the equivalent value in multiple currencies. We used web sockets to get real-time data, and the UI was very user friendly. The app also involved writing some custom views to display data, which I always enjoy.
What is your biggest pet peeve?– Tardiness. Drives me nuts!
What is happening in tech that excites you at the moment? – Big data and its effect on machine learning, and additionally the side effect big data centers have on utilities. As more and more data becomes available, via devices and the opening of data silos via APIs, how can we best use machine learning to maximize the utility of that data? It’s a very exciting topic. And it’s also very intruiging how the energy requirements of the data centers needed to house big data affects the environment and local municipalities, especially how those centers are innovating energy usage to become more efficient.
Favorite .gif – I like to avoid gifs. Sorry. My favorite emoticon is ;)
Quote you live by – I live by two, T.H. White ‘s “Might does not make right” from the book “The Once and Future King”, a favorite childhood book of mine, and “Do or do not, there is no try” as spoken by Yoda. That second one is great motivation for me when working on difficult projects under tight deadlines.